What game or rule set or edition, best delivers the quintessential RPG experience?
Obviously answers will be based on personal opinion. Over the years, I've played pretty much every version of D&D (except OD&D and 4th Ed) and Palladium (pretty much all settings before Rifts) and Marvel Superheroes so my scope is fairly limited. I probably played some other systems also but they clearly weren't memorable enough for me to recall.
I'd have to say either B/X or 1st Ed AD&D is the quintessential RPG for me. I have good memories of the other games with some great fun days but I still remember a couple of my fighters I rolled up for AD&D. I remember their personalities and accomplishments. There were summers as a teenager when I used to play D&D with my buddies every day, all day and night for weeks on end. It was a glorious gaming time for me. If an RPG provides me with fun memories as well as memories of specific characters, that I think is a great game.
I liked Heroes Unlimited and Marvel Superheroes and enjoyed the systems but I think that has more to do with my love for superheroes than the actual rules.
Nostalgia clouds my judgment but I still think B/X and 1st Ed AD&D are the best RPG experience. I lean more towards B/X simply because it is so easy to learn and so flexible.
People are going to go smug, state this is or that is, but from an objective perspective, it is D&D. It set the genre, its still being sold and played 50 years later. Most games quit getting published in a decade after release, but not D&D. If you mention D&D everyone knows what it is, if you mention GURPS they say excuse you or if you mention Savage Worlds they say yes the world is really rough I hate the bloodshed.
AD&D IMO
WEG's D6 Star Wars.
Two kids with cardboard tubes running around the yard screaming with no idea of what the other kid is screaming about.
After that, D&D wherein the players often have no idea what the other players are screaming about.
Everyone seems to have their own ur-Dungeons & Dragons. How they played it or how it should be played. I think more have actually read the rule book these days even though the current generation aren't as much into reading. Looking up cool attack powers is their life blood. But the divides between those who want tactical challenges, character immersion, exploration, and just fucking around seems as vast as ever.
There is no 'quintessential RPG experience.' There are several forms of the hobby, along with cousins to it, and countless variations within each one.
The hobby is too diverse in 2024 for there to be only one answer. The same thing happens in board games. You can't select the epitome of board games because there are too many types of games, styles of play, mechanics, etc. If you are trying to find the right game for you then I'd recommend thinking about genres, mechanics, and style.
Style for me looks at game play. Are you looking for a seriously played quasi-realistic tactical simulator or a theater of the mind shared narrative story game or throw some dice and be silly with your friends? Then how much arithmetic would you like to do while playing? Do like rolling on tables? Can you easily recall rules or would you enjoy walking down the combat round flow chart on your turn (I'm looking at you 3rd edition GURPS)? Finally do you want to play high or low fantasy? 1920s detectives? Sci-fi? Western? a specific intellectual property like Flash Gordon or R.A. Salvatore?
To make your selection even more challenging there's a fair amount of cross over from the board game world that can give you a similar experience. Rather than play a story game bust out Before There Were Stars or Once Upon a Time. When my group cancels and I was itching for a combat heavy session I'll take Shadows of Brimstone off the shelf to get some RP light/tactical combat game time. My rotten adult children won't play Call of Cthulhu with me so I have shifted to the Arkham Horror LCG. It's a nearly perfect solo RPG experience. Nearly perfect because your choices are limited to what you have in your deck/hand and you have a set goal. You can't have that "OMG! you joined the Yithinian cult?" moment but you can get an immersive adventure with high degrees of risk and reward.
IMHO: Story game: 7th Sea 2e; Vanilla TTRPG: Castles & Crusades or Dragonslayer; Silly RPG: DCC; IP specific games: Savage Worlds; Sci Fi: Classic Traveller.
Board games to get the same feel: AH:LCG; Fiasco; One Upon a Time; Shadows of Brimstone; Tales of the Arabian Nights (from Zman Games)
Quote from: Man at Arms on March 19, 2024, 12:01:13 AM
What game or rule set or edition, best delivers the quintessential RPG experience?
None of them. The great GM delivers the quintessential RPG experience. The GM is best able to achieve greatness with a set of RPG rules that fits like a glove the game the GM is trying to run, ideally for players in a place to appreciate and roll with it. Naturally, the exact rules (RAW, house ruled, and rulings) will vary, because a great GM inevitably develops their own style.
Sure, there's going to be quite a bit of overlap that can be discussed, but it is in general terms, the same way that most good desserts have sugar in them. :)
False. Black bear.
edit: Oh, sorry. I thought you were asking which bear is best.
Quote from: Man at Arms on March 19, 2024, 12:01:13 AM
What game or rule set or edition, best delivers the quintessential RPG experience?
The one you come up with yourself that never quite seems to meet exactly what you had in mind, no matter how much you play test and revise it. This is like asking what the epitome of a burrito is...there's always SOMETHING you'll want to change.
Quote from: RNGm on March 19, 2024, 12:05:28 PM
False. Black bear.
edit: Oh, sorry. I thought you were asking which bear is best.
Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galatica (1978)
I'd like to say WFRP 1e or 2e.
But the truth is the best experience I've ever had is with certain DMs and players that I really jived with.
Quote from: JackFS4 on March 19, 2024, 12:29:13 PM
Quote from: RNGm on March 19, 2024, 12:05:28 PM
False. Black bear.
edit: Oh, sorry. I thought you were asking which bear is best.
Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galatica (1978)
"Bears do not... What's going on? What are you doing?" ;D
Love that scene from the office.
For me, these days it's Old School Essentials. A Cleaned up version of B/X that feels like D&D did when I first started playing (Though I started with the red box).
Quote from: GhostNinja on March 19, 2024, 12:36:42 PM
Quote from: JackFS4 on March 19, 2024, 12:29:13 PM
Quote from: RNGm on March 19, 2024, 12:05:28 PM
False. Black bear.
edit: Oh, sorry. I thought you were asking which bear is best.
Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galatica (1978)
"Bears do not... What's going on? What are you doing?" ;D
Love that scene from the office.
Same and I'm glad others got the joke. It's my default answer to almost all overly broad or vague questions whose answers are entirely subjective. The only exception is when asked about what is best in life which has one definitively correct answer. :)
I want to roleplay with Dwight, Andy from Parks and Rec, Kramer from Seinfeld, and Charlie from It's Always Sunny, using CharDeeMacDennis rules 2.0.
That's the epitome of RPG - both meta and LARP.
In all the time I've been playing RPGs (about half my life) I found that the one I always keep playing is D&D. I've played every edition, and I found that 1e AD&D is my favorite. I've found that it just encapsulates the quintessential RPG experience in one ruleset. Is it perfect? No. Is it a compleat experience? I think so.
I mean the best way I can put it is: when I think of what an RPG is, how it plays, and what it looks like: I think of AD&D. I guess it'll sound a bit pompous to say, but I think AD&D (and D&D in general) is the closest we've come to a Platonic form for the RPG.
Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on March 22, 2024, 11:49:12 AM
In all the time I've been playing RPGs (about half my life) I found that the one I always keep playing is D&D. I've played every edition, and I found that 1e AD&D is my favorite. I've found that it just encapsulates the quintessential RPG experience in one ruleset. Is it perfect? No. Is it a complete experience? I think so.
Funny, I have played 1st edition and I disliked it due to how poorly it is organized. I am playing in a 2e game and I prefer it much better. Think its better overall.
But YMMV
Paranoia.
Do you disagree citizen?
If you disagree why do you disagree?
Do you think the computer is wrong?
Quote from: GhostNinja on March 22, 2024, 12:24:00 PM
Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on March 22, 2024, 11:49:12 AM
In all the time I've been playing RPGs (about half my life) I found that the one I always keep playing is D&D. I've played every edition, and I found that 1e AD&D is my favorite. I've found that it just encapsulates the quintessential RPG experience in one ruleset. Is it perfect? No. Is it a complete experience? I think so.
Funny, I have played 1st edition and I disliked it due to how poorly it is organized. I am playing in a 2e game and I prefer it much better. Think its better overall.
But YMMV
2nd edition is good too, I mean hell I'll play anything prior to 4th. That is one thing I will admit, it is all over the place. I love the way Gygax wrote it, but it's definitely not as clear as it could be. I guess to clarify, it's the rules themselves that I find to be the epitome, not necessarily the way they're presented.
I just use the D6 system (the 3 books, adventure, space, fantasy) for pretty much everything, and just tailor the rules a bit to steer it toward the settings tropes as needed. Our first attempts at playing dragonlance with d6 required much stealing of dnd's dna to make the players comfy on the rails they were used to (classes levels spell levels etc), but its never 3-5 adventures deep before they start whining as they did in 2e ad&d about why cant my dwarf be a platemail wearing wizard, where are my options, and you have to point out that all of that was possible from the start and it was you, the player, who insisted on the rails of class level and racial restrictions, and you could have made a dwarf necromancer from the very beginning using only the d6 rules w/o a single stitch of me flavoring it or shaping it beforehand.
While I've put a great deal of research into arthurian, medieval, dark ages as a setting, and have stolen much from birthright but scaled it down to be more like the stronghold video games, and thus have a penis-throbbing need to play arthurian or post-arthurian (the grail was never found! its a crusade! kill the saxon!)...I am actually sorely tempted to make the next run ALSO dragonlance with no rails this time, but in one of the periods these DL fans despise, chaos war or war of souls or after Takhisis is finally dead and Paladine has become a mortal elf...there is plenty of cool stuff to explore in the setting (even alternate timelines) and the only thing standing in the way of that are these dragonlance fans themselves. Moreover, d6 is better imho for dragonlance than ad&d anyway, just does it all out of the box for the most part as fast as you care to use it.
So in summation, the quintessential rpg is one where the players are demanding snotty dragonlance fans and you torture them by playing the versions of dragonlance they dont like...or failing that just an arthurian or post-arthurian setting with quick easy rules like d6 system.
I really just posted because i wanted to pee all over dragonlance fans, because they are the worst players to play with on Krynn. I do not hate the setting really, what I hate is that players act like you are not supposed to engage with it or do anything with any of it except let it sit like a backdrop painting on a theatre stage...which is a waste.
While its far from my favorite setting i'm fine with engaging it fully, balls deep, alternate timelines, chaos war, age of mortals, what the hell ever, lets just play, lets make it ours, we have no one to please or impress can you not let go of this even though now, in our late 40's, when we can clearly see that these novels were young adult tier at best and the setting and the use we can get out of it is what really matters? Fuck raistlin, fuck canon, and fuck you hoss, i came to see minotaurs punch-o-size goblin faces and to use the assorted d6 star wars starfighter dogfighting rules for dragon rider aerial battles....why are you like this?
Quote from: tenbones on March 22, 2024, 11:27:15 AM
I want to roleplay with Dwight, Andy from Parks and Rec, Kramer from Seinfeld, and Charlie from It's Always Sunny, using CharDeeMacDennis rules 2.0.
That's the epitome of RPG - both meta and LARP.
I want to play the Charmed RPG with Holly, Rose and Shannen. Not Alyssa.
I think it's cool, that people are mentioning d6 games.
Quote from: HappyDaze on March 19, 2024, 02:19:06 AMWEG's D6 Star Wars.
Yea, if I could only pick 1, it would be West End Games D6
Star Wars. I put a lot of mileage on my books playing Gamblers, Failed Jedi and whatnot. Lots of fun. Lots of great memories with friends.
Having said that, I've also had lots of fun playing Palladium's
Robotech and
Rifts, even if the former is as piss poor a representation of the Tv series as you can get, and the latter as incomprehensibly bad once CJ Carella got ahold of it and started the asinine power inflation.
Played a bit of
Mechwarrior and
Battletech and watched a lot of tournaments of the latter where groups of idiots got absolutely trashed because they fought piecemeal.
I also had fun playing classic
Deadlands: The Weird West with a group (no shit) known as The Dynamite Gang (for their penchant for blowing things up with dynamite) on the old Pinnacle Mailing List. Sadly, their rules for Magic back in the day were a little TOO rough (I played an Alchemist and couldn't do jack squat).
Played a bunch of White Wolf Storyteller games (mostly
Vampire and
Werewolf), though I had the most fun playing a Mage in a
World of Darkness crossover game.
Played a little
Star Frontiers and
Top Secret back in the early days (my second and third RPG experiences). Some fun memories, especially
Lady in Distress and discovering the wonderfully horrific way in which a 12-gauge shotgun can work wonders against bad guys.
Of course, I've played
Dungeons & Dragons the longest, with every version except 0E and 4E, starting with a B/X Fighter playing through
B2: Keep on the Borderlands.
AD&D 1E is my absolute favorite version, though I can accept later revisions did good things (ascending armor class, simplified skill system, etc). I've also played and run
Castles & Crusades.
Any Fantasy Heartbreaker.
"Conan what is the epitome, of an RPG? "
Crush your enemies while playing games and drinking with the lads
See the orcs be exterminated (and their cubs) before you
And hear the lamentation of the DM when you free the sexy village wahmen and take them as your wives
That is the answear to the riddle of the epitome rpg experience .
So sayeth CROM and thou shalt find no fault in this truth. And if you do to Hell with you I say. :o ;D
Quote from: Teodrik on March 23, 2024, 01:34:00 PM
"Conan what is the epitome, of an RPG? "
Crush your enemies while playing games and drinking with the lads
See the orcs be exterminated (and their cubs) before you
And hear the lamentation of the DM when you free the sexy village wahmen and take them as your wives
That is the answear to the riddle of the epitome rpg experience .
So sayeth CROM and thou shalt find no fault in this truth. And if you do to Hell with you I say. :o ;D
This forum needs a "like" button...
l5r 5e
BX D&D.
Easy to get into and it teaches the DM to personalize their worlds and think about the environment and personalities of the creatures encountered.
I think historically it was a combination of wargaming and the need to simulate microwargaming, e.g., involving medieval combat. After that, storytelling was brought, and the mechanics for that involved the same as that used for wargaming: attributes determining movement, attack, defense, etc., capabilities, with randomization affecting that and thus the outcome.
From there, attributes were determined by roles, such as races, types of players, etc., together with types of armor, weapons, etc., and combined with the same mechanics.
Finally, new "skins" were used (sci-fi, sci-fi fantasy, etc.).
It's like simulating reality by categorizing and quantifying its elements.
Quote
e·pit·o·me
/əˈpidəmē/
noun
1.
a person or thing that is a perfect example of a particular quality or type.
I'm having trouble picking out any single RPG to be the "perfect example" of an RPG. I think one of the strengths of RPGs is that there are multiple different genres, rulesets and approaches. If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I'd have to go with GURPS.
But I'd be grumpy about it. Because I'm not that much of a fan of GURPS. It's just that it can cover everything.
Quote from: Brad on March 19, 2024, 12:26:12 PM
The one you come up with yourself that never quite seems to meet exactly what you had in mind, no matter how much you play test and revise it. This is like asking what the epitome of a burrito is...there's always SOMETHING you'll want to change.
Ain't that true? I've been working on my own game system since D&D3 came out and I never had one document that I could call it v1.0, or even v0.1! I lost the count of how many complete re-designs I did already.