The Forge Archives

List a top 5, 10, 20, or whatever.  Then tell us why you picked these games as your favorites.

This seems so out of place on this board, I'm half expecting a moderator to come along and say we don't do this kind of think here; but I can't think of a reason why not, so I'll play.
[list=1]

• Multiverser. As one of my fans says, I'm expected to feel that way. However, I liked the game very much before I had anything to do with it; creator E. R. Jones introduced me to play in it, and then asked me if I would help him put the mechanics together into a workable system. I loved it immediately. Things I like:
  • One game takes you to every imaginable world, so you don't have to create a new character or learn a new system every time you want to do something different--it's constantly different.
  • Player character death is something to avoid, but it's not the end--you don't tear up your character and start another, you pick up your sheet and continue in the new world.
  • The mechanics really do preserve the flavor of various kinds of worlds (sci-fi, modern, fantasy, historic, whatever) while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the characters (wizard, tech-head, psionicist, mutant, whatever), easily balancing what is possible in any world against how powerful the character is in each area.
  • From a referee's perspective, it gives me the tools to do just about anything quickly and easily; and to tweak it to be exactly what I want.
  • From the player's perspective, I can make my character whatever I can imagine, and then remake him into something else if I want to change him.[/list:u]Well, those are some of the things that I really like; let me move on.
  • Legends of Alyria. I know it's not yet out, but I've played it, and it's an incredibly good game. Again, here are things I like:
    • Group character creation. Players don't create their own characters at all. They get together and create all the major characters who are going to be part of the story they're about to invent, and then once they've got the characters on paper, they decide between them who is going to play which. Thus the heroes, villains, sidekicks, and major minions all fit right from the beginning. We know who they are and why they're here, and how they connect (or are going to connect) to each other.
    • Substitutionary scores. I only just came up with that name for them on a recent thread (Mechanic for weak characters to surmount the odds -comments?), and I'm fascinated by their function. When faced with a challenge, if there is a way you can show one of your character's personal values are clearly involved, you can dump your attribute score in favor of your personal value.
    • Positives are Negatives. All your values, called Traits if I recall correctly, can be called by you or your opponent, and can work in your favor or against you. Thus we can say that Samwise Loves Frodo is a trait, and place it at full. When it comes to a contest, Samwise can call on that trait at full and use it to prevent Shelob from killing Frodo; on the other hand, Gandalf can use it against Samwise to force him to nearly drown himself trying to follow Frodo into Mordor. Every trait cuts both ways; to the degree that it is an advantage, it is also a disadvantage, just by being a trait.
    • Metagame points turn the game toward absolutes, not player advantages. That is, a player can bypass the entire resolution system by spending a point of corruption to make a bad outcome or inspiration to make a good outcome, but the outcome is good or bad in absolute terms, not in terms of how it goes for the character/player. Hard to explain. Try this: if you spend a point of corruption, the Devil wins; if you spend a point of inspiration, God wins. How you fare in the matter is not a major consideration.[/list:u]Overall, its a powerfully narrativist game.
    • Star Frontiers. O.K., I'm going back a ways, but these were some of the best games I ever played. A lot of it had to do with the referee, I'm sure; but there was a lot to learn from the system. I got the single roll hit and damage system idea from the Zebulon's Guide to the Galaxy supplement, which made Multiverser run a lot smoother and gave real form to its relative success/relative failure system (I think our version is better, but I still credit that game for it). It was an effective game for space adventures at the time, and years later when I did Multiverser conversions I was still impressed with aspects of it.
    • OAD&D. I like the game. I see how it can be viewed as incoherent, but in our play this was more on the order of internal tensions. Alignment did provide issues for us to debate and discuss; the system worked well, and I ignored very little of it (as referee). It has problems--combat is slow, party cohesion is often artificial--but I never had trouble with it. I don't have specific likes here; I just think it does what it does very well as a package.[/list:o]
      There are a lot of games that probably should be on this list, but I can't speak to them yet. I've got Sorcerer and Burning Wheel sitting here waiting for me to have time to get to them; I am really impressed by Universalis and My Life with Master, but have yet to pick up copies of these. Little Fears is around here somewhere, but my wife decided it was inappropriate for our kids, so it's in limbo and I've neither read nor played it. I did download the free Ars Magica edition, but haven't had the time for it yet. I'd love to see a lot of the games that people praise, but between time and money it's not going to happen soon.
      
      So I look forward to the lists to come.
      
      --M. J. Young

Hello,

This thread is legal. However, everyone, let's focus on that Why part and practice some self-reflection regarding it.

Best,
Ron

Since Ron gave this the go-ahead..


Game 1: Shadowrun, 2nd Edition.

Firstly, I won't deny that 3rd Edition has tighter rules, and that having the appropriate sourcebooks (for any edition) enhances and expands character options to an exponential degree; but with a couple of said sourcebooks, 2E beats it hands-down in flavour. The artwork and "in character" chat in the sourcebooks (in the form of ((comments)) from game-world personalities on their version of the internet) gives you an awesome picture of just what you've stepped in to. 3E artwork is too clean for me, and doesn't have what I consider to be the SR flavour.

That in mind..

Reason One: the Matrix! also Deckers! Neuromancer is easily my favourite novel; and Case my archetypical hero (no Hercules for me, please, I'd like my saviours to be addict techno-wizards), so being able to play his sort of character sold me on the game right off the bat. the Virtual Realities sourcebooks (and now the Matrix sourcebook) just drives this even further.

Reason Two: System supporting conflict. This is sort of a belated realisation, since gaining some Forge terminology, but it makes me appreciate it more. The world is waking back up, and bringing magic with it, and that magic is having some serious issues with what mankind has done in the mean time (technology and pollution). The mechanics reflect this, and striking a balance is pretty hard. The two sides often end up in conflict. Quite simply, any time someone starts using magic they're going to be futzing with large portions of modern civilisation; any time another oil drilling platform is created, you shaft large quantities of magic-using folk (not to mention biosphere et cetera).

Reason Three: Setting. I like my chrome; it's the draw of most "cyberpunk" games. And yet, I also really like my fantasy; swords and trolls and magic. Shadowrun gives you both, and the group can turn the dials on those to appropriate levels for all.

Reason Four: did I mention I get to be a decker?


Game 2: Mekton Zeta.

Mecha! Mecha mecha mecha! I loves me giant robots. I loves me anime. MZ does a damned fine job of playstyle supporting the genre. Not only that, but the degree of customisation (paired with the Mekton Technical System book) is just crazy.

Unlike BattleTech - which needs a seperate game entirely (MechWarrior) in order to support standard RPG play - Mekton Zeta can switch between tabletop wargame and roleplaying game in the same turn, and still keep in theme with the source material (a five minute long conversation in the middle of a raging battle field? no problem!).

Lifepaths! I've always liked these. And while the sort of lifepaths R.Talsorian games may use isn't everyone's preference, I still dig 'em. It's fun to roll a bunch of dice, see the results, add 'em all up, and see what you can patch together. This is probably my favourite sort of character generation method, so small wonder.

Actually.. hmm. That's present in other areas of my gaming, too; I always like sealed deck sorts of tournaments in CCGs and such, as opposed to bring-your-own. So, yeah. Lifepaths. Give me a random bucket of Legos and let me see what I can do with 'em!

At this point in my gaming career I'd really prefer a slimmer stat and skill profile - I think this is legacy "InterLock" stuff - but it works for the game.

Oh, and why this instead of BESM? BESM combat sucks. Sucks rocks. Sucks 'em good. Some of the most unsatisfying stuff ever. In addition, when I'm building a giant robot of destruction and doom, I'd like a lot of crunchy math in the process; MZ gives it to me.
--

And those would be my top two, really, the games I know I'd seek out to play in, given compatible gaming groups. I also know there's some as-yet-unwritten game out there that I'm still searching for to scratch my video gamer itch and take pole position, but as I haven't been able to find it, these'll have to do until then. ;)

alright, i'm going to skip over the obvious local favourites (i.e.: tRoS, Dust Devils, Little Fears, InSpectres, etc.) and go for some of the stuff that doesn't really get a lot of discussion on this site: the mainstream.  most of these are old, some are new.  in all though, these are the games that informed me both as a player as well as a burgeoning designer.

1- Cyberpunk 2020:  by far and away one of the most influential games i've ever played.  it's established in my head the framework of how attributes and training should interract and enhance each other.  it's a model for simple rules design with mechanics that emulated the setting.  it's also damned fun to run around with a Ronin Assault Rifle and rip into some Corp scum as a Rockerboy freedom fighter.  Also, it's been said before, and i'll have no shame in saying it again: Lifepath is the sh*t.

2- Nobilis:  Rules light?  yes.  Rules that emmerse you into the setting?  yes.  a setting that is like clive barker getting it on with alphonse mucha and having a baby?  yes.  can i play?  (man, i have to confess i ran the most f*cked up game of nobilis.  still my crowning achievement.  players wound up reversing the nettle rite on an execrucian and making him into a part of reality by planting a "black appleseed" that represented his inverse reality in the real world.  they brought the seed to heaven and had Samael plant it into reality.  in my game, the further away from the center of the Ash you got, the more time became objective (as in time becoming an actual object that could be seen and manipulated).  when Samael planted the seed, it was planted in all points of time at once.  the seed grew into the tree from the garden of eden.  the execrucian became the snake from the garden of eden.  fantastic sh*t).

3- Marvel Universe RPG:  man does this need a second edition, but the first edition had so many solid ideas about diceless gaming it made me feel dirty for months about picking up the occasional d6.  i really do feel it's the best supers RPG ever made (sorry you DC Heroes and Champions fans).  it just has the feeling down in the rules.

4- Vampire: the Masquerade (2nd edition): I had the chance to meet Mark Rein(dot)Hagen about two years ago when he was touring for support of his excellent and now-all-but-deceased game Z-G.  while playing with his action figures we discussed game design.  The conversation eventually turned towards all things white wolf and he seemed to have a certain... distaste for these products, apparently from the outset.  i asked him "why did you make Vampire anyway?"  He said (not in these exact words, but something similar) "I felt that there was going to be this need for it.  people were starting to develop the ideas for this sort of scene that would embrace this idea i had in my head.  i wanted to create something that could ride the zeitgeist."  man did he ever do that.  

5- Whispering Vault: my first foray into the world of Player Narration of Outcome.  it was also the first time in a roleplaying game where i didn't feel that the system would "break" the horror.  and the rules-lite approach to the powers of the PCs was great.  Had one PC describe Rend as funneled chaos math that appeared to the eye as rings of super-equations spiraling outward.  that was cool.

6- Unknown Armies (1st edition): I will admit that i am a character sheet guy: i'm the kind of dude that will look at the character sheet in the back of the book before i look at a single page on the inside.  if things seem too complicated or i see the word "alignment" anywhere i will normally put down the book and back away slowly.  The character sheet for the first Unknown Armies took my breath away.  it was the first time i had seen the characters emotional state presented so front and center.  it made me buy the book on the spot and play it within a week, even though i hate percentile systems (and i mean hate in a way that will prevent me from playing Call of Chthulu).

7- Castle Falkenstein:  alright, Mike Pondsmith needs to stop wasting his time working for microsoft, has to come back to gaming and write some great systems again.  this was the perfect steam-tech victoriana role-playing game.  did away with dice for cultural reasons (dice we're a lowly man's possesion in Europe of the 1870s), got rid of Attributes and made dueling fun, all of which emmersed you right into the setting so damned well i didn't want to come up for air.  it's also the reason why i am a fiend for card-based systems.  

8- Tribe 8: while i'm not exactly a huge fan of the silhouette system, T8 was just such a beautifully and lovingly rendered game world, with a magic system that held so much potential for character exploration that i couldn't resist.  

9- In Nomine: I never had the chance to read the original french versions of this game, In Nomine Satanis/ Magnus Veritas, but once again i find myself pushing past a fairly weak system to get into a setting that just tickled the right bones.  the mix of irreverence, irony, slapstick and seriousness made me do cartwheels.  in play though i found myself ignoring the system alot and only having players make rolls when there was no other way around playing without raising player suspicion (i.e.: combat).  i would be very interrested in finding out what the original system was like, if anyone around here knows.  i heard Croc had a very different design for it.

10- Kult:  and, one last time i find myself playing a game in which i loved the setting and didn't like the system.  i can still remember seeing the cover of the book at a local gaming convention when i was just a wee fourteen year old and knowing that the inherent blasphemy in a game like this required my immediate purchase.  i read it that night at the hotel and sucked down the setting,  a fierocous war between forces of evil and evil (note the lack of good) with humanity stuck in the middle.  yet, that damned system.  a skill-system that didn't seem to be attached at all to the characters attributes didn't make sense to me in any way.  a combat chapter that was devoted to far too much crunch.  but i still forged ahead and had fun with the game.  this would set the stage for my use of Whispering Vault and Unknown Armies.

wow, i actually got to ten.  looking back over this i have realised that i really do like horror role-playing a whole lot.  and i don't like fantasy role-playing at all.  i also see that while i do prefer games who have a system that compliments the setting, i will play a game for setting alone.  i also find that i like attribute+skill/ difficulty based systems.  hm, funny the stuff you learn.  

alright, that's about it for me.  i need to get back to writing Bruise.

laters

1/ Dungeons & Dragons - Every game published has either been an emulation of or a reaction to this game. It defines the hobby.

2/ Traveller - The first lifepath/professional experience system and the first complete SF game.

3/ Champions - THE model for statistical modeling and balance of power.

4/ Mekton II - The first game I saw that used the same combat system for all combat, from fistfights to the Macross.

Hello,

Did everyone miss my comment about practice self-reflection, above?

Don't just say why or describe some feature of the game and expect us to infer that you like that sort of thing.

Why do you like that sort of thing? Why didn't you notice it prior to your experience with this game? What impact on your own play and enjoyment has occurred since that experience?

C'mon, people. This is supposed to be a value-added forum, not a Rorschach test or a show-mine-too disclosure session.

Best,
Ron

1/ Dungeons & Dragons - Every game published has either been an emulation of or a reaction to this game. It defines the hobby.

Dungeons & Dragons showed us what we do and why we do it Ron. For good or ill it is THE RPG. I think it is safe to say that RPGs may well never have happened without it. After all Wargaming was around for a long time without spontaneous development. D&D showed us how to define characters by their careers, which is a core of every RPG that I play.

2/ Traveller - The first lifepath/professional experience system and the first complete SF game.

Without Traveller I think that the idea and concept of background, the core of my roleplaying characters for some time, would not have been codified into lifepaths and storywebs in modern games.

The complexity of the background and the scope of the stories was inconceivable in D&D before it. This game also birthed the "gearhead" portion of my RPG career. Everything was designed and written down. I had, at one point in the Scouts & Assassins campaign I ran, well over 300 starship and spacecraft designs. While at that time none of the PCs even had any shipboard skills.

3/ Champions - THE model for statistical modeling and balance of power.

Taught me that all the cool background in the world means bupkiss if you die in the first ten seconds of the fight. It also taught me that no matter how balanced the characters were, the resolution system was inexcusable.

4/ Mekton II - The first game I saw that used the same combat system for all combat, from fistfights to the Macross.

Taught me that a system can be inclusive, easy, and flexible.

Well, you all know my love for HQ, but I'll put in a vote for Nobilis... despite having had no real play for me yet.

But for my Nar itches, it's hard to beat as a scratcher.

Ignore the bulk of the (yes, fantastic, and deep, and fabulous, etc etc) background, ignore the central drama / resource point bidding mechanic and look at how you define each character:

They're in charge of policing an aspect of reality, which is at the beck and call, which is chosen and partly defined by the player.

Their behaviour is governed by a code that is either chosen or designed by the player.

They're the co-rulers of a pocket reality co-operatively designed by the players.

The net result of this is that, by the end of character creation, you've got the proverbial metric assload of thematic material ready to hit any incoming premise you care to have wander along.

That, and the book's almost as gorgeous as my children...

A note from the peanut gallery on Champions as a great game.

It represented the first game system I had seen where you actually chose exactly what you wanted to play, with no random rolls.
Plus, you could hint to the GM what you wanted to see happen in play, by taking Disadvantages, like Hunted and Dependant NPC.
Big cool stuff back in the early 80's...

Quote from: Ron EdwardsDon't just say why or describe some feature of the game and expect us to infer that you like that sort of thing.

Why do you like that sort of thing? Why didn't you notice it prior to your experience with this game? What impact on your own play and enjoyment has occurred since that experience?

Hmmm...as if my previous post wasn't already long, I guess I am obliged to make some additional comments.

• Things I said I liked about Multiverser:

  • QuoteOne game takes you to every imaginable world, so you don't have to create a new character or learn a new system every time you want to do something different--it's constantly different.

    By the time a decade had passed, I had started running three D&D campaigns, had two sets of Gamma World characters, two sets of Star Frontiers characters, a couple of characters in a D&D clone game, a set of Traveler characters, and a set of Met Alpha characters--and I really wanted to know what was going to happen next to every single one of them. I get very attached to my characters. On the other hand, there wasn't enough time to play all these games, and there were more and more games I'd never played. I wanted to try a spy game, a western game, and several more; but if I started them, I'd want to know what became of the characters after that (and I would not want them to have died in the end--I prefer happy endings). Multiverser's constantly changing worlds meant that I could explore all different kinds of worlds, adventures of all these types, and never leave a character behind me. I got to have the extended campaign, the perpetual continuation of the exploration of the character's life, and have the ability to do hundreds of settings, and not have to be part of hundreds of different games.

  • QuotePlayer character death is something to avoid, but it's not the end--you don't tear up your character and start another, you pick up your sheet and continue in the new world.

    This fits with the above; I liked my characters, and didn't want them to die. I didn't want my players' characters to die, either. Yet if the characters never die, eventually players wonder whether they ever would die--is the referee pulling his punches, making it seem as if there's danger when there really isn't any? I've seen players go completely wild in games where they had concluded the referee would not allow their characters to die no matter what they did. Multiverser made it possible to die, and made death meaningful, but didn't make it permanent. Thus death still had a sting, but it wasn't so severe a sting that the referee was inclined to blunt it or players too fearful of it or affected by it.

  • QuoteThe mechanics really do preserve the flavor of various kinds of worlds (sci-fi, modern, fantasy, historic, whatever) while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the characters (wizard, tech-head, psionicist, mutant, whatever), easily balancing what is possible in any world against how powerful the character is in each area.

    This, too, is back to the first--I like the variety of play in my games. This let me take the same character into different kinds of worlds, and still have it be the same character, without changing the nature of the world.

  • QuoteFrom a referee's perspective, it gives me the tools to do just about anything quickly and easily; and to tweak it to be exactly what I want.

    To some degree, my interest as a player in playing every conceivable sort of setting translates to my interest as a referee in running them all. I think it makes me feel good whenever I hit something unusual and realize that I already have a way to render that in Multiverser terms--I don't have to create some new rule or system to make it work.

  • QuoteFrom the player's perspective, I can make my character whatever I can imagine, and then remake him into something else if I want to change him.

    I was in a game in which the referee brought me into a medieval magical world on the cusp of an industrial revolution, and my knowledge of law soon had me working on creating the government systems for this. I became chief justice of the supreme court, wrote the constitution, established a bicameral legislature, and got people working on a democratic process to replace the prince if he were killed. When I got killed (act of war) in that world, I found myself in a superhero world; but some of the magic I'd learned in that other world and some of the gadgets I'd picked up in a futuristic setting (where I had been building a successful career as a retro pop star) enabled me to start building an identity as a superhero. What will I become next? Don't know. Whatever it is, it will be interesting. I like this idea that I can explore aspects of who I might be, who I might have been, who I might yet become--still anchored to me, so there's this feeling in a lot of cases that I might have done this.[/list:u]
  • Things I liked about Legends of Alyria:

    • QuoteGroup character creation.

      This was incredibly effective. We started with one character, added another, figured out how they were connected, which led to several other characters who had to be connected to them, and before we knew it we had half a dozen characters who all mattered, who all would be significant parts of the story we were about to tell. There's very little worry about spotlight time, because each role was created to be significant. The character creation process didn't have anyone struggling to make the best character, but rather trying to figure out how to make all the characters as good as they could be. Then we parcelled them out much more with an eye to "you would be good at this part" than with any concern for character power or anything like that. The story sprang from it quite naturally.

    • QuoteSubstitutionary scores.

      The above-linked thread talks about what I like about these; I'd really like to see them used in more games, where they'd have even greater effect. I think this is a significant innovation, particularly in the fact that a weak character with strong beliefs or values can at that moment be the equal to a strong character regardless of how strong the strong character's values are--the disparity between base scores and the substitutionary scores is what gives them value. This is a mechanic with a lot of potential; I just might steal it if I find a game that can use it.

    • QuotePositives are Negatives. All your values, called Traits if I recall correctly, can be called by you or your opponent, and can work in your favor or against you.

      This has got to be one of the bit anti-gamist features in the character design process: you can't power-game in the design, because your strengths are your weaknesses.

    • QuoteMetagame points turn the game toward absolutes, not player advantages.

      Indeed, I like this twist because it gives the game a moral dimension behind whether the player characters are good or evil; the adventure is played against the backdrop of good and evil generally, and a player who wants to bypass the resolution system can do so by throwing the outcome to the greater good or the greater evil, not by buying victory for himself.[/list:u]
    • About Star Frontiers I mentioned the single roll hit and damage system idea. This turns the hit roll from "did you hit" to "how well did you hit", gets rid of the whole "roll for damage" step in the process, and so streamlines combat. There were other aspects that impressed me, but much of it was just that the referee ran an excellent game in which we usually felt like heroes.
    • About OAD&D I wrote:

      QuoteAlignment did provide issues for us to debate and discuss.

      I think that was one of the big things: we did bring moral and ethical questions to the fore through play because of the impact of alignment on our characters; and this spilled over into conversations after the game. Of course, it was sort of my first game (started with BD&D1, but segued into OAD&D without realizing for a while that they weren't supposed to be the same game--thought the differences were corrections). So I would have to say that OAD&D did things no game had ever done before, from my perspective, and although improvements have been made in game design, it is still a marvelous achievement.[/list:u]
      That should provide some self-reflection about why I like these things. Is that what you're after, Ron?

Quote from: M. J. YoungIs that what you're after, Ron?

It's definitely what I'm after.  Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.  It's given me a lot to think about.  

For those who haven't posted yet (including me!), please do some self-reflection and figure out what your favorite RPGs are, why they are your favorite, and post them for all to contemplate.

Thank you!

The system that's grabbed me lately is The Puddle, which is an anti-pool variant.

I love that it's got this thing that I've described elsewhere as an economy of narration rights. You as player choose what you really want to have control over, and earn the right to do it again by initiating conflicts whose results you won't be able to rule over. There is a very minimal "whiff" factor when a player reeeeally wants something, and the consequences are low if the dice don't pay off. The thing that's frustrating for me in games sometimes is that not getting what I want is bummer enough. Adding various penalties and punishments on top of that can feel like  overkill.

It could likely be a reaction to years of trying to create characters who seemed humanly complex and interesting, and in the various rulesets ended up being too generalist to be good at anything. Thus I failed at rolls all the time and never got anything to happen that I wanted to happen.

TROS and Universalis for the same reasons, and of course my own game. Sorcerer as well with its bonus die thing.

This thread is mildly problematic for me to respond to, because far and away the bulk of my play was with a homebrew system, which will be of little relevance to anyone here.  But the things I shamelessly stole for it and one observation on it may be interesting, I hope.  

The observation is that it "produced clear imagery" by having a damage output a lot like TROS.  An old player made this remark to me the other day and I have been mulling over it, becaase it suggests a role for system in the creation of part of imaginary space.  Anyway, that can be discussed some other time.

The resolution was shamelessly lifted from the "spectrum" devices employed by James Bond, Marvel SH and the Zebulon's Guide expansion for Star Frontiers, all of which I played to a greater or lesser degree (Bond and Zeb's are striped in the opposite axis to Marvel, though).  What I liked specifically about these was the subtle graduations of increased effect as ability level climbed, combined with the capacity to allot specific outcome types to different bands.  You could also articulate specific success outcomes dependant on certain bands quite strongly; this makes for a system than is both smooth and chunky.  Benefits and penalties could also be smooth or chunky depending on what sort of effect you wanted.   I like such "two dimensional" systems.

Vampire is a strong favourite.  This was the first good Attrib + Skill system I had used and I liked the mix-n-match ability rather than the strong links I had seen previously between an ability and a game action, such as AD&D2's use of strength to output a damage bonus.  Obviously, WoD still ties strength to damage but in a rather more removed sense that allowed for more varied applications of strength.  This lead me to see attributes as working rather more abstractly than I had previously imagined, and hence to concern myself less with the appropriate use of an ability.  It also cured me of my scorn for "detached attributes", as I saw the AD&D saving throws, that operated under special rules.  Also, I liked the fact that Vampire was strongly and coherently imagined rather than being a setting as holding space.  It was much more interesting and the people in it felt more real, as it were.

Mage gets the same kudos only moreso (actually, not about the people, they were much flatter IMO).  Systemwise the sheer guts to give the players so much creative scope and really let 'em get out of the leg-irons  impressed.  It should be noted I've never GM this system myself and I'm not sure I could; perhaps the very freedom attributed to the players frustrates my ability to 'counter-game' constructively, they are too mobile (in a number of senses), every time I think about it I go off on an infinite loop of if-thens and the process has to be manually terminated.  Obviously thats exactly why I loved it as a player, that and the whole setting which provoked some of the most interesting character-character interchanges I've ever had.

Pretty much what Zathreyel said about Cyberpunk 2020 word for word except... HW-style keywording potentially does lifepathing better.  Partly this feeling is due to my fondness for my favourite all time value for money product, the Hardwired supplement by Walter Jon Williams.  I didn't (of course) do this with the native system either, but its such a superb piece of structured adventure design, that really worked out of the box, that I take is as a master class.  I know WJW had a background in game design but I'm not aware of it being in RPG previously.  It starts in media res, has a good places to go, people to see effect, and the links were good, sensible decisions that never felt forced.  I had a great time with this game, and I think of it more or less as a game in its own right, a specific game that we bought and played and set down.  Obviously, having read several hundred pages of novel set in the world, I knew it well too, which was also a factor.  But  it was a real extension as it were rather than merely a homage and this gave it much more life.

Tsk tsk, how could I forget Conspiracy X.  Partly I'm just in awe of the knitting together of the sundry conspiracy tropes such that, unlike the x files, you actually get what you signed up for.   Also, unlike say Chill, its doesn't just establish that theres stuff out there, it also sets up real new knowledge, that is, secrets that change your perceptions in a significant way.  You can do a real game of progressive enlightenment with this much well written material IMO, and engage the players with that directly.  All this, and arguably my favourite system too, I'm really sorry so few people like it.  The thing I find most striking about Con-X's system is that it is the very opposite of an open ended system, its an extremely tightly bounded one.  Like the spectrum devices I mentioned above it has a combined smooth and chunky feel, which to it a limited extent gives it a kind of dimensionality.  But the scope of action never gets higher than it needs to, and the expression of things that need doing never stretches that scope.  I think its great stuff, of all the games I've played I don't think I've ever encountered less difficulty turning a game world situation into a subjectively appropriate systematic expression.  And I just love the fact that it doesn't have any "sticky out bits"; this I suspect is the primary  impediment to people learning it.  I think you have to sort of sit down and work out how to kill someone with a 9 mil, through all the stages, and then compare that with working through killing someone with a sniper rifle, and then then you will see the the system almost go into autopilot.  It is a system that is best explored through case studies BECAUSE it is so encapsulated and self-contained.  And in case anyone wonders about my championing of this under-appreciated game, no I don't get paid or anything, I'm just immensely impressed.

i wrote a list of ten games that i thought were influential in my development as a gamer, and going in depth into each game and describing each specific feature and why i liked it, as well as why i had noticed it in this one instance over otherw would take far too many pages to do.  so, i'm going to work in broad strokes here.

first, i have to mention that i found all of these games pretty much sequentially over the last ten years or so, each opening up my understanding of game design and its impact on actual game play little by little.  In chronological order:
1) Cyberpunk 2020
2) Vampire: the Masquerade
3) Kult
4) Castle Falkentstein
5) Whispering Vault
6) In Nomine
7) Tribe 8
8) Unknown Armies
9) Nobilis
10) Marvel Universe RPG

what i liked about each game, and didn't understand that i liked about each, was emmersion.  each game had a different way of putting you into the mood, mindset or setting of the game or your character.  

In Nomine had a funny dice set, the d666, that immediately made you giggle a little, which was exactly what that game was about.  Kult had the excellent drawbacks system to help yo map out your characters psyche.  Castle Falkenstein used stats that sounded like they came right out of a pulp novel and used a card-based mechanic instead of dice because dice were used "by ruffians and ne'er-do-wells".

as i explored each new game i found different ways of having people feel like they were a part of the game.  Vapire used a rule, pretty quickly thrown away in the humanity section of the rulebook, that stated that as a vampires humanity rating spiraled downwards their outward appearance would reflect this loss of humanity.  I took that and ran to the bank, getting vampires with hair that looked like straw and fingernails that turned black and bruised looking.

CP2020 had lifepath, which plopped you right down into your character's head, as well as a score for humanity.  UA had a character creation system that was centered on developing the way your character reacted to fear and anger.

all of these little things helped bring to mind, for me, what the games were about.  and that's where my joy is in playing, exploring the themes and ideas of the game, whether they be setting or meta-.  a crime game is no fun if it doesn't at least breeze over the ideas of morality and desire, and having a system that supports that from the outset or even makes it the center piece just isn't doing the job right, in my eyes.  in the end, it made me realize that system mattered.

there, short-short version out of the way.  sorry i wans't more specific here, or above.  these ideas are of course, right off the top of my head, so i haven't spent a whole lot of time doing much in-depth thought here.  i hope i haven't left any gaps in my logic here.  

hope that clears things up for you ron!

No one ever seems to mention this one, but I really enjoyed Tunnels and Trolls.  It was the first rules-lightish game out there and created solo dungeon adventures (and consequently the Choose Your Own Adventure style books).  It was narrative, tongue-in-cheek, monte haul play at its best!  Take That You Fiend!

Hello,

Umberhulk, you will be pleased to discover quite a few in-depth, extended discussions about Tunnels & Trolls at the Forge. Run a little search and see.

Also, for purposes of the thread itself, my Top 5 RPGs (http://www.fandomlife.net/A55840/fln.nsf/all/52385EA75E4435DE80256B22006000B6?OpenDocument) might be interesting. It's one of several such articles by a number of publishers/creators, so it's a good companion to this thread.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Ian, the formatting looks a little weird at Fandomlife.net, in my article; you might wanna check it out.

Hey Ron,

P.S. Ian, the formatting looks a little weird at Fandomlife.net, in my article; you might wanna check it out.

Use this link instead.

Paul

Hmmm... I hesitate to use the word "favorite" but let's say these games I hold in esteem.

1) Dungeons & Dragons. As noted by some, it defines the hobby. I don't think that's accurate. I think its caricature of roleplaying. People outside of the hobby think of it as D&D. Whenever I think about roleplaying, or do some pure blue-sky dreaming about design, it is in one way or another based on or in terms of D&D. I really don't understand the depth to which D&D has colored my own thinking, but I do believe it is very deep indeed. Note how this one is on the list without any mention of enjoying playing the darn thing.

2) Villians and Vigilantes. This is the game I probably had the best time playing. Bar none. First, I dig on super heroes. Second, the system (as tweeked by the GM) while strangely complex, it somehow made sense. It seemed to fit the expected results in the super hero genre. I suppose I feel the same way about V&V that some other feel about the Freedom Force computer game.

• Rolling up characters was neat. I always took the best 5 of 7 option. Doing so created a please "ahh" when several powers came up that in turn inspired a character concept.
  
• Combat is the meat of this game, natually. The first piece is the power chart which cross-references the various attack powers against various defenses to arrive at a base to-hit number.
  
• Initiative was handled in a great phases> turns system which allowed characters to have several phases of actions per turns. The power Invulnerability hinges on this by giving X number of points that absorbed damage. These points refreshed at the end of the turn, so it was usually a race to do enough damage to the villian to get past their invulnerability to do some actual damage.
  
• Characters have two numbers, power points and hit points.  Power points are a nifty little mechanic that is multi-functional. [list=1]
• any action the character performs in comabt uses a PP. Performing multiple actions (punch, punch, kick, kick) cost additional PP. As they dwindle, you character gets close to tiring. Should a combat run over, you can spend hit point to continue to attack.
• Power Points power your powers. So if you want to shoot that energy blast, it might cost you 3 PP vs the 1 PP it costs to sock him.
• You can spend up to 1/10th (rounded up) of your PP to absorb further danmage. This is called "rolling with the punch' so you can't do this if you're attacked from behind or when you're knockedback into a wall or the like.[/list:u]
  
• The effectiveness is multi-layered. There is a stat called Basic Hits which is used to figure your Hit Points. If you take Hit Point damage that exceeds your basic hits, your figure is knocked back that many inches on the field. Should it knock you into anything, it causes more damage.
  [/list:o]
  
  And so on. I list all of this because this is probably the crunchiest system I've ever dealt with but I think it all fits together really well in spite of looking hodge-podge and I like it. I still like it. Which is completely against my current tastes.
  
  3) Everway. Again, another game I have never played, but this is the first game to really show me different ways for doing thing and started me on my current journey, such as it is. This was something I had hoped FUDGE would do but in comparasin, FUDGE is very traditional in comparison.

I was a real Chaosium fan (don't seem to get many mentions on the Forge...).  The first game I ran as GM was...

1. ElfQuest
At the time ('bout 1988) I felt I'd found a game that had a proper background and encouraged a lot of character depth.  A strong player group dynamic was formed in this game because the character was placed well in a group (the player's tribe).  You rode wolves and stuff... cool as!  Good, consistent rules - as a GM I never really felt that I was having to make rules up as I went along.  Come to think of it, that's one of my personal requirements of a good rule system...

2. Runequest
Following on from the above, this opened me up to being able to set my games in a much larger and more varied world.  Obviously it was also based on Chaosium's Basic RPG System and I enjoyed it for the reasons gven above. Players liked it too - they could climb ropes, pick locks, etc, even if they didn't have the word "Thief" written on their char sheet... :)

3a. MERP
I was a big Tolkien fan since my Mum first read me the Hobbit when I was about 7.  This game was a God-send then.  Those critical tables - beautiful descriptive.  I defy anyone who says that charging your percentile dice to roll on them wasn't damned exciting!

3b. Conan
The original TSR game (not the d20 ior GURPS versions).  This was a little beauty of a game and (I believe) well ahead of it's time.  No stats, just talents grouped into pools.  Having different colour levels of success was great for me as a GM - I enjoyed being able to narrate more than just a success or failure.  The game was very basic in terms of rules but had everything you needed - D&D would have been far, far better had it used this system (in my humble opinion).

4. Hawkmoon
Chaosium again I'm afraid!  What a setting though!  I used to love making up adventures where players could stumble across abandoned research labs from the 20th century in the Carpathian mountains, only to be set upon my mutant monkey men.  Wild.

5. Dungeoneer
Not the card/board game, but the extended rules based on the Fighting Fantasy books series.  Back when a simple system of skills from 2-12 , rolling under on 2d6 seemed to encompass everything I needed as a GM!  Written in a nice, light-hearted way too.

6. Skyrealms of Jorune
What a deliciously freaky place that was.  Shame the system was a bit ropey (althought the combat options were a real eye-opener and allowed some useful tactics).  Althought I mainly got my kicks from GMing, this was the one game that I begged by mates to run so I could play.

There were others, but these defined my early (mid to late teens) RPGing.  I wouldn't change them for the world...

;-)

Ben

Even though I've never played it, Over the Edge has a special place in my heart as the game that blew my mind.  The funny thing is it may have been the game that made me hate roleplaying for years, cause I suddenly knew that There Was Better Stuff Out There, stuff I'm still chasing to this day.

In 1992, senior in high school, I was a rpg-aholic, not just in terms of playing, but reading and collecting as well.  I think I spent far more on games than on petty things like clothes.  Yeah I was a geek.  I heard about this really odd game called Over The Edge, some strange small press game that was influenced by William S Burroughs and I had to have it.  (I'd recently read The Naked Lunch and was an impressionable little youngster.  Best way to warp a high schooler's mind for the better is to make him read that book I tell you.)

When I managed to find a copy (Digression, can we all say a prayer for Games Of Berkeley past?  Although actually it has gotten amazingly better in the past year, still I miss the old store.) I was confused.  I did my normal skim of the book, getting an idea of how it was laid out and was disappointed.  The rules looked so puny, and the character sheet was confusing.  No stats?  What is this?  But upon really reading it I was blown away.  The idea that a game could be so simple, that you didn't need 100 different rules for different situations, that you didn't need a list of skills or classes, the players could just make one up!  I realized gaming could be something totally different than I'd ever played.

However, that inspiration killed other games for me.  My old favorite GURPS just felt wooden now.  AD&D was painful, and did I really want to play this mess of rules and confusion that was Champions?  Vampire I never really liked, I still don't know why.  I mean I wanted to like it, I'd been told so many cool things about it, but I'd tried it a few times and it just seemed like work.  And no one I played with wanted to try something so novel, so different as Over The Edge.  (Even when I divorced the rules from the setting, cause I knew for sure I wasn't going to be able to do justice to a setting so odd as that.)  

Add going to college soon after, and learning about this thing called life, and games pretty much went to the wayside.  In that past few years I've been getting back into them, but I'm still frustrated by the lack of a gaming group that I really feel has a chance at playing something like Over The Edge, or many of the games I see here on The Forge.  Honestly, how do you guys find your groups?  I can't find anyone willing to really try anything so experimental, so not the kind of games they have been playing since they were kids.  

Since I've been reading this board for a while I've been able to better enunciate what I want out of a game group, and why I'm unhappy with the groups I've been in.  And I'm able to actually explain just what it is about these types of games that draws me.  Before it was more of a feeling than anything else.

So there you have it, Over The Edge.  The game that killed gaming for me, and my favorite game by far.

hi folks. I've been semi-away for a while, occasionally popping over to read stuff but too busy to post. noticing this thread, I thought I'd pop in to contribute, sticking strictly to the guidelinse Ron layed down and being very introspective about the Five Greatest RPGs in my Personal Mental World.

[list=1]

• D&D. it was what started it all -- and I don't mean "started the role-playing industry", I mean "started it for me". just before I was first exposed to D&D around '75/'76, I had discovered fantasy literature via the two strands of Tolkien and the swords&sorcery writers, so when a friend introduced me to D&D, I was naturally attracted to this weird game that allowed me to participate in a shared fantasy. that was the big part: shared fantasy. I was never much into playing games, but I took to D&D in a way I never  enjoyed Monopoly or chess.
  
• The Fantasy Trip. this was the first point-buy system I ever saw, and really appealed to me because of the increased detail it allowed me to give to my characters. it's what lead me to later get heavily into GURPs, until I realized there was something else about TFT I truly enjoyed: simplicity. there are a few basic principles in TFT which can be combined over and over again to create as wide a variety of effects as you could wish. as I grew older and became more frustrated with high-complexity games like Hero System, Rolemaster, and eventually even GURPs, I began to really appreciate what TFT showed me.
  
• Call of Cthulhu. I didn't get to play it much, but since I'm a Lovecraft fan, I had to get it and try it out. the change in focus from survival to staying sane was the first inkling for me the role-playing could be something more than a treasure quest. really, in CoC, your character is going to lose -- but you can choose how, and make losing entertaining. I found that I really liked the idea of "living in the fantasy" as much as I earlier enjoyed using the shared fantasy as a backdrop for a dungeon crawl. I was becoming more fascinated with color.
  
• TOON. I only got to play this once, although we had a great time playing it (although the hallucinogenic mushrooms may have had something to do with this, too.) TOON is important to me mainly because it got me thinking about games where the characters don't have to die. you can have fun without the risk -- or rather, by shifting the risk to the social level outside the shared fantasy. TOON hammered home for me that I really liked the surprises that emerged from other people's imaginations, which in turn re-emphasized my desire for shared fantasy; I realized that this is why I liked shared fantasy.
  
• D20. after not playing D&D for quite some time, some friends got me to play a couple 2nd edition games, then one asked me to GM the new 3rd edition, so I started buying books. I noticed how thorough the new system was, how the design was rock-solid, how a lot of the setting details are exciting, not just in the WotC material but in some high-end third party resources like the Shattered Lands. it was obvious to me that 3rd edition was a very well-designed system, probably the best version of D&D ever -- and I didn't want to play it. not because of the "D&D sucks" meme that so many other people like to bandy about (I just said I thought it was a great game, remember?) what D20 made me realize was that my tastes had changed; I still wanted the D&D-like settings and scenarios, but I didn't like complex rules systems anymore. I didn't want a wargame fused with an RPG. D20 was the final step that lead me back to realize that I wanted a game more like TFT or TOON, and it encouraged me to hunt up alternatives like Fudge, Risus, or the various games we all discuss here on the Forge.
  [/list:o]
  
  so that has been my psychic journey through the land of role-playing, so far (it's still not over.) it tells you a hell of a lot more about me than it does about role-playing in general.

Always love these threads because it lets you see inside other's experiences, which is endlessly fascinating for me.  I am going to list mine in more or less chronological order.

Chess & Other Wargames.  Are you high? Chess as an RPG? Well since it is well argued that RPG's derive from wargaming I would say that its fair and perhaps relevant to mention these games.  For thise who may not have played Chess: You take on the role pf either a White or Black King, and through move and counter move attempt to gain advantage in a game that caricatures Court Politics.  Its diceless, very easy to setup, and can provide a few minutes to hours of fun. Diplomacy is another War Game/RPG mix that is also diceless.  Both are very Gamist, IMO but possibly other elements are involved as well. IF you have never taken on the role of a general or squad leader I would heartily recommend that yor give a War Game a try.  

D&D Basic & AD&D1e It all started with the D&D Basic set, when Humans had 4 classes, Dwarves could be.. .er dwarves, and imagination was ignited.  The game allowed me to explore elements of games that were completely alien at the time: Organized Make Believe.  AD&D thrilled me because there wre more then 3 kinds of armor :) So it catipulted my imagination forward and showed me that there could be different games in this RPG phenomena.  As a note I always wanted to try Tunnels and Trolls but never could find anyone to play it or my parents to buy it. (This was 1979 and I was 8).

Pommels & Paradoxes  Never heard of this one? Well you wouldn't.  It lasted two weeks, was never sold, and really was not measurably better then D&D at the time.  It was however, my very first attempt at RPG design.  I was 9 and even then I knew that as good as D&D was, it did not fulfill all of the itches that it had awakened a year earlier.  Totally by coincidence some of the things in Pommels & Paradoxes actually showed up in HackMaster.

Runequest I had not realised I had been doing not much more then Hack n Slash until I was introduced to Runequest.  Sure ther was combat but suddenly there was s toryline, a world with real mythology, and a system that took design from a different tact. The BRP has been very influential in my own design ideas.  Especially opened my eyes to a different way to look at magic.

Cyberpunk  What no Elves? Other then being another diferent system and one that is pretty straight forward IMO, it introduced me to a whole new paradigm.  Suddenly our own world was every bit as interesting as fantasy worlds and there were a great many stories to explore along the way.  Especially without the use of some supernatural bits which was a new concept for me at the time.

Sorcerer  When I first played Sorcerer I sat down with three distinclty different players.  This was a system none of us had ever really experienced and it lead to some of the best role playing sessions I personally have experienced.  The three players got the game and that was one of the biggest surprises.  They totally left their old habits behind and embraced a totally new way of thinking and it worked.  At that point I think I let many of the final elements of the "Old Habits" fall away.


Sean

Quote from: Ron EdwardsTop 5 RPGs might be interesting. It's one of several such articles by a number of publishers/creators, so it's a good companion to this thread.

Best,
Ron

Those are interesting.  Any chance of seeing an update now that more than two years have passed?  

Again, thanks to everyone who has posted their top RPGs!

Alrighty here we go a couple of these games will be lumped together because I like them for similar reasons.  This way I can avoid going back over the same thing multiple times.

Obsidian/Shadowrun:  I the main reason why I like both of these games is the long drawn out charecter creation process.  Shadowrun allows for for a myriad of possiblities when it comes to a new charecter and the vast majority of the source books for the game simply enhances this process.  The vast amount of weaponry and equipment that is availble to the starting charecter is mind boggling and you get a sense of real power right from the get go.  I can't stand Shadowrun's game system, but I find myself buying new source books for the game and spending hours making up new charecters just to exparament with the new options that are available.  Also the game world accomadates a wide variety of diffrent charecters and playing modes which makes things fun and interesting.  Odsidian's charecter options aren't quite as vast as Shadowrun's but they still offer a relm of interesting possibilities.  Most importantly is that the game allows the player to work for a corporation and it lets the players desighn that corporation.  This way the player can carve out thier own part of the games world  right from the get go.  Not only are they a part of something but they belong to something important.  On that same note, allowing Kultists access to all the powers from the start also gives a facinating array of choises to choose from.  One of my favorite types of games is big on Char gen and light on system and these two games have by far my favorite Char gen systems.

Sla Industires/ Little Fears/ A-State: These games all capture my imagination is such a way that I would sit down and write random source material for them or even game fiction.  As a form of leisure activity I would sit down and write out vast sections of backgroun information that may never apply to the charecters but is still fun to just write for.  The background information to the game allows for my imagination to take off in a variety of interesting ways.  

Paranoia:  Hardcore fun game world to play it.  The rules have been thrown out long ago by me and I actually have diffrent players follow diffrent sets of rules.  Some players will have a role over system, some a roll under system, and some will use a dice pool.  It tends to keep them on thier toes and it is a fun game world.

My Life With Master/ Le Mon Mori/ Puppet Land:  I like these games for sheer innovation.  When I first read these games I went "Wow games can be written and played like this".  Le Mon Mori especialy captured my imagination as it both had a fasinating world to play in as well as an interesting system to run things.  

With the exception of Shadowrun  and Paranoia these games are fun to play with thier intact system and game worlds.  Shadown's system drives me nuts and I just screw with Paranoia's system because it makes my players sad.  However, the aspect I pointed out in each game is good enough to cover up the games other faults.  I don't like Obsidian's background information but I do like the game enough so that I can put that aside.  I think that it is interesting that I am willing to play with a game I mostly hate because of one enjoyable aspect (shadowrun).  In fact in the last shadowrun campain we had a problem with players dying to often because we wanted to make someone new.  Oddly enough only the games in the last category I can play without modification to rules or world but I also do not feel inspired to write random source material for the games themselves.  Unless they are being played they remain mostly inert whereas SLA Industires I write for on a regualr basis.  This need to add to SLA's wealth of material might account for the game's longevity despite its multiple "out of print" stints as well as long periods of time with no official products.  

When I try to make a game it is a balance between the games I like to write for just for fun and something new and innovative.

Favorite in what way?  From the actual play experience or from the game system/background?

Well from play experience, here goes:
1)  Justice Inc.:  Yeah, it's going back a bit, but this game was probably the most fun that I ever GM'ed.  My players also said that it was probably the most fun they had.  The Hero System was flexible, and once the learning curve had been passed, was easy to play.  And the setting (pulp era 20-30's fiction) provided a large palette to play around with.  From fights with mafia Don's in Chicago, to fighting ancient Fu-Manchu wannabes in San Francisco, or searching for a lost Holy Text in Phonecia (Lebanon), it was hard to beat.

2) Phoenix Command:  We played 3 campaigns set in the Vietnam Conflict with 3 different units (IIRC, 3rd Bttn, 3rd Div USMC, 25th Infantry Div US Army, and part of "The Herd" 173rd Airborne Brigade).  What made this game so memorable and enjoyable was its utter realism.  The Phoenix Command system was years ahead of its time for realism, and could almost be described more as a board game than a roleplaying one.  But with a little tweaking of roleplaying rules (additional skills for example), the realism offered made for some very profound, poignant, and provocative gameplay.  The combat system, being as deadly as it was, required a lot of forethought, and true bravery on the part of the players to expose their characters to danger.  Living Steel was a  system which used these rules (for the most part) that was also an excellent game that really highlighted the importance of being heroic.

3) Ars Magica:  This game was a blast.  The rules were lite and fast, but with a great amount of detail if required.  Our own campaign was interesting because of a Christian Magi in our covenant.  This one thing created quite a stir and made for an interesting handle to roleplaying plots.

4) Twillight 2000:  Probably the longest running campaign I have ever been in and one of the most enjoyable.  The system was fairly lean, but with an attention to detail.  Forgetting about where your food, ammunition or fuel came from was perilous.  As was neglecting wounds, or not getting proper nutrition.  Indeed, every post-Apocalypse game I've played has been enjoyable (Freedom Fighters, The Morrow Project, AfterMath), but Twillight 2000 had that right combination of post-apocalypse survival with modern 21st century warfare.  I personally liked the older 1st edition Twillight 2000 rules than the later 2nd edition rules (with the exception of the modification of the autofire rules).  But the 2nd edition rules are also very good, and I played with these as well (the character creation system was a bit arbitrary in my opinion when it came to skill lists).

5) Paranoia:  Probably the most hilarious game I've ever played.  The very premise of the game makes for a riot, and next to Justice Inc, had some of the greatest belly-laughs of any game I've played.  The setting alone is worth it.

6) Sengoku:  If you're into Japanese feudal era, you must get this game.  It uses the Fuzion system, which is a lite weight Hero System with much of the complexity taken out.  It plays very fast, and the character creation system is very authentic to whatever sub-genre you want to play (historical, chanbarra, or anime).  The Shinobi supplement is also excellent and a must-have if you wish to play authentic shinobi.  I used a modified Martial Hero rules to implement greater martial moves, as I found the basic manuevers to be too limiting.  But if you don't mind a little tweaking, Sengoku is a great game...worth the price of the book just for the historical info and the immersion it can provide for the game setting.

Quote from: DauntlessFavorite in what way?  From the actual play experience or from the game system/background?

Good questions!

My answer is "You tell me."  What makes a game your favorite game?  The actual play experience, the game system, the background, or something else?  Maybe it's different for every game.

Again, thanks to everyone who has posted!  If you're reading these and haven't yet posted, please do so. (I need to post my favorites too!)

Hmmm... Intersting question.  I actually had to think about this because of all the games I have played.  :)

1)  Mage the Ascension (2nd edition).  Most folks always, ALWAYS say Vampire the Masquerade (nothing against them, Vampire is great too!) but very few people ever play Mage.  Why?  Because it's "too hard" or "you have way to much to think about" or soemthing along those lines.  (At least that is what I have heard on more than one occasion.)  That is why it is my hands down favorite RPG.  There are so many things you can do and so many ways in which to do them!  For example, you are walking down the street when as you approach the corner, you see across the street, the Bad Guy.  You can not run, there is no place to go and he would catch you.  You are standing directly under a street lamp.  He'll see you any second!  What do you do?  Well, you can use Forces to turn the street light off and run into the shadows.  (It happens all the time, light go out at odd occassions.)  You can use Forces to send a power surge to the light and make it explode!  (Kind of obvious but it might draw the attention of everyone else around and you could get away in the confusion.  Besides, he's less likely to attack you with an audience.)  You can use Forces to bend the light away from you thus no light touches you and you can't be seen.  You can use Forces to absorb all the light touching you so you look like a blotch.  (Kind of freaky but hey, it's an idea.)  You can use Entropy to stir up the dust in the air or the particles in the light and make a small cloud in front of you to obscure you.  You can use Mind to erase the thought of you from his mind.  You could use Mind to make him think you are elsewhere.  You could use Life (or Mind) and make him fall asleep so I can walk past him.  You could use Life (or Entropy) to stop his heart and kill him.  Etc, etc.  There IS a lot you can do and no set way you HAVE to do it!   That is why I love it!

2)  Call of Cthulhu.  (1920's)  Why?  Because you are mortal!  Bullets hurt so don't stand in front of them.  Because you might never defeat the bad guy, stop the ritual in time, etc, etc.  Because there are so many skills that even if you have never been trained in it, you can still attempt to use it.  (Oh you can always try!)  :)  I love the sanity stat as well.  Knowing that my character can never be more than say 65% sane really makes me reflect on how to play her and how to let her to develop.   I also love it because most of the time, it is not a matter of if you die, it's more a matter of how you are going to die that makes it fun.  Also, the fact that while you may have defeated the big bad evil critter, you still may not have saved everyone from the effect of the ritual.  There is not always a happy ending in CoC.  

3)  Legend of the Five Rings.  Another game where so few people play the RPG because they feel it is "too involved in the political aspects.  I want to get to fighting!".  (At least that is what I have heard anyway).  I love it because of the intrigue and the politics.  Knowing how to place my katana down in front of the Lord of the House, or Daiyamo and knowing exactly how he will react to how I place it.  Knowing that sometimes, a sharp tongue can do more damage to your opponent than a sharp sword can.  I also like it because of the 'keep' system of dice.  You can roll a number of dice and keep another set number of dice.  No one says you have to keep the best rolled.  On many occasions I have pulled a punch to my favor.  For example, I was in a duel with a cousin.  I was pretty much ambushed and forced to fight.  I knew I was the better swordsman as did he and all of his cronies.  He was after me for that very reason.  If he killed me, he would gain the glory of beating that year's Topaz Champion and get a foe out of his way.  If I killed him, I'd have the rest of his family seeking vengence on me and I would be in duel after duel after duel in "revenge for his death".  Instead, I ended up pulling the blow and only wounding his leg badly enough that he had to be carried back to his house and Daiymo.  This showed glory upon me for not killing a noble cousin.  This showed glory on me for being the better swordsman and this showed dishonor on him since they knew I obviously "pulled the punch".  It is this sort of subtlety, intrigue and politics that makes this game so much fun for me.

Hmm, favorites.  Of course, there're favorites to play, and then there're favorites to  read, and then favorites to steal from, and so on.  Overall?  Do supplements count?

Call of Cthulhu, because for some reason this plays so wonderfully.  I've also read all of Lovecraft (not including all his dreadful poetry), so that's a natural.  I guess I also like the occult feel of the whole thing, and my preference is for CoC games in which it's not rugose cones and fishy (literally) townsfolk but more ordinarily creepy goings-on.  I also love the Gaslight material, sadly out of print.

Ars Magica, a must-have for history nuts.  As time went on they threw out more and more history and I got more and more upset, but AM2 didn't actually tell you that you couldn't play a scrupulous historical setting without rewriting all the backstory.  I also played in an AM game that was fantastic and went on for a very long time, so there you go.

kill puppies for satan was quite literally the game that got me onto the Forge.  I stumbled on the link, giggled, went to lumpley's website, laughed until I cried, and then had to buy the game.  From there, I just had to start contributing to the Forge in a big way.  I've never played it, sadly, but it's already changed me drastically as a gamer.

Unknown Armies and Nephilim I find to be wonderful mines of stuff to steal, although I don't love them as games.  The Nephilim supplement Liber Ka is a masterpiece in its way, although I have my doubts as to whether it could actually work in play.  But for my sort of nut, it's wonderful to pick up an RPG about the occult and find that somebody's done a lot of (rather disturbing) homework.

Original AD&D, the only version I have ever owned.  I still love it.  Hack, slash, slay, kill, get loot, lather, rinse, repeat.  I still have chunks memorized.  People carp about dungeon crawls, but I love 'em, so long as everyone knows that the point is to put that encyclopedic knowledge of encumbrance and movement rules to work in a kill-fest.  One of the best things I ever did (in grad school) was play in a two-shot beer-n-pretzels affair where we designed Oriental Adventures characters, about level 8, with all the samurai trimmings, and then waltz through a level 5-6 Western-style dungeon playing violent tourists.  Anyway, gotta love AD&D!

Chris Lehrich

'Ello people!

Games I love/games that had an influence on me:

D&D 1st ed. simplified rules in Norwegian: The first game I ever played. Honestly, it sucked beyond compare, but playing through the sample story, killing the Carrion Crawler... beautiful. And it was so limited it forced you to think stuff like "why the heck can't I play an elf wizard"? And then you argued with your friends, thweaked the rules, and the proverbial ball of independent thought was rolling.

MERP: After the aforementioned D&D this was a revelation. Detailed setting, chrunchy, realistic rules, the works. Even though I played it for sheer hack value, it changed stuff, and the old ways suddenly seemed bland.

Earthdawn: The worlds greatest game, period. The combination of horror value, fantasy elements and a world alien enough to provoke an intense sense of wonder. OK rules, wonderful character potential, great setting. Though Living Room Games have mede it their mission in life to screw it up (the new 3rd ed books are... er... not so good), the old stuff is brilliant. "Prelude to war"; i long for the day I get to play that through. Heck, the best LARP I ever made borrowed from Earthdawn.

WOD: In my opinion, all WOD games are good alone, but they start to taste funny when combined. Stille, it presents the best rules I've seen so far, and a setting quite different from what I 'd seen by then.

You might see a distinct lack of Indie games here; lately, my passion is turned towards LARP, and I'm sorta new to the world of Indie roleplaying games. But I'm learning!

Aksel Westlund

This is actually my first post here.  I thought I knew more about RPGs and their trends than anybody I knew until I stumbled across this site.  I'll try to keep up.

I've been trying to decide if I'm more of a Narrativist or a Simulationist.  I seem to be a bit of both.  But one thing I definitely like in a game is a system for internal conflict.  I find it helps set the mood for the game, and encourages more psychological drama.  I usually attribute this invention to Call of Cthulhu with its Sanity points.  Everyone I've talked to who has played this game agrees with me that the funnest part is watching your character slowly go insane.  Cyberpunk 2020 picked it up pretty well with their Humanity points (not to mention a trait called Cool.  How Cool is that?), which was of course picked up in Vampire: the Masquerade and ran with in the World of Darkness line.  My favorite WOD games were the ones that had a lot of this, most especially Mage, Wraith, Hunter, and especially Demon: the Fallen.  I also have to give props to In Nomine, which, when they made a GURPS version, was the first game to convince me that system DOES matter.  Taking out the whole concept of the 3 forces (corporeal, ethereal, and celestial) in character creation and resolution really changed the whole feel of the game and ruined it.  Wraith was also the first game that convinced me that RPGs could be a legitimate form of artistic expression, not just a bunch of people playing make-believe.  It seems that the better a game is, the harder it is to get a game started.  My favorite game setting of all time was Planescape.  I loved the concept and setting so much, it didn't even matter that I wasn't too fond of the AD&D2 system it was attached to.  The problem was that to have any ide awhat's going on, you had to read several novels worth of background material.  I had an impossible time finding people who really wanted to invest that much in it.

Here's my list, in no particular order:

Champions, 2nd edition (before it and GURPS cross-pollinated)
- - - - -
Personally, this was my first RPG, and to this day my GMs comment that most
of my PCs tend to be heroic (in some gaming groups I have been the only
person to roleplay successfully a paladin who is idealistic and heroic rather than
a bad parody of Dudley Do-right).

Why?  I love superheroes!
Why?  This system, with its identical mechanics for every attack, forced the player
to personalize his/her PC through its theme and style rather than through
accumulation of abilities and accessorizing with mechanics add-ons.  Its focus
on SPFX, roleplaying, and style as the only way to differentiate two characters
emphasized (almost enforced) the more narrativist approach I prefer.  It also
required a narrativist GM to ensure that SPFX have an impact on the gameworld,
lest lightning bolts and fire blasts and telekinetic jabs became interchangeable.
Champions is one of the few times I've seen a mechanistic approach encourage
non-mechanistic play.

Villains & Vigilantes, 2nd edition
- - - - -
Why?  I love superheroes, and I love designing my own powers, something
which Champions did not then allow.
Why?  This system made no pretense of equalizing all players; with randomly
rolled powers, there was just as much joy in doing well as the token two-power
PC in a group of four-power PCs.  And, to be honest, with the holes in the game
mechanics (which seemed to arise more from naivete in a new form than from
any slovenliness on the part of the system designers), this was one of the few
games which made it fun to play with the system.  AD-&-D seemed to encourage
rules lawyers, but V-&-V seemed to encourage interpretation lawyers -- probably
the closest a narrativist like me can come to systems seduction.

Mekton II
- - - - -
I love to use genre-specific systems for something outside their genre to merge
the feel of one with the plotlines of another, so I adapted this oh-so-anime' system
to a horror campaign I ran.  I ended up with a unique "Dark Shadows" anime'
campaign!

Why?  I love mecha/kaiju!
Why?  The clever descriptors for the trait levels amused me (lowest Luck rating =
"The gods ~hate~ you!"), the human-mecha damage translations worked well
for human-werewolf damage translations <laughter>, and this was my first
encounter with the idea of lifepaths.  To this day, I enjoy systems which
provide lifepaths for immersion in their campaign settings.

Ars Magica, 1st ed
- - - - -
As I mentioned before, I love to merge genre-specific systems with campaigns
of a different genre, so I merged the Ars Magica skills and merits/flaws system
with Villains & Vigilantes for a modern day superhero campaign with a very
Arthurian/medieval British feel.

Why?  I love folklore & fantasy
Why?  I found the motivations rolls to be an excellent tool for roleplaying during
those moments when one is trying to play a character considerably different
from one's own personality.  The motivation rolls work for me in the same way as
Unknown Armies' Rage/Nobility/Fear mechanics.  Occasionally, quantification
~can~ be a useful tool in the beginning (so long as one does not become overly
reliant upon it.)

DC Heroes RPG, 1st ed
- - - - -
Why?  I find I prefer the iconic, idealistic vision of superheroes in DC of the past
twenty years somewhat to the more melodramatic and angst-prone visions of
superhuman protagonists which have become Marvel's current style.
Why?  Most superhero games are generic to the point that neither DC nor Marvel
superheroes cleanly fit; this is a game system so perfectly tailored to replicate
the DC superheroes of its time that it is difficult to run any other company's heroes
in it!  (Vertigo and Watchmen also fit poorly.)  Also, the campaign books were
a comic book aficionado's dream!

Toon / Teenagers from Outer Space
- - - - -
Why?  Damn fun!
Why?  These games expanded the possiblities of gaming for me at the time they
came out.  And they're still damn fun!

Justice, Inc.
- - - - -
Someone else mentioned this book, and its sourcebook is one of the best I've
yet encountered for running pulp campaigns.  Moreoever, its sourcebook works
well for any system.

TWERPS
- - - - -
I LOVE THIS GAME!

I've run several highly successfully long-term campaigns using this system.  The only
change is that I declared that ST stood for Stature (a PC's importance in the storyline)
rather than for Strength (which has too strong an AD-&-D meaning for most players).

Why?  This game system is incredibly boring for combat, and it's incredibly boring
for simple mechanics-focused solutions, so it requires players to focus on solutions
outside the default gamer's box of mash-until-problem-solved and deus ex dice.
The simplicity of the skills (a PC may have a +2 in thief rather than an array of
theft skills, never defining what skills are or are not part of a particular thief's
repertoire) forces players to negotiate constantly with the GM over what their
PCs can or can not do, drawing their arguments not from some rulesbook but
from their PCs' histories and character conceptions.  TWERPS not only discourages
power gamers; it discourages killer GMs and GMs who prefer a hostile gaming
relationship with players.  While some people enjoy that kind of player-GM interaction,
I do not, and on a purely personal level I prefer a gaming system without it.

Doctor Xero

Simulation... not a game... but the reason I game.  (Notice I don't say "role play".)

I want a game that gives me a solid, balanced and flexible system to create not only characters, but whole worlds that are consistent in their fantasticness (Ok... THAT isn't a word...)

I want a game that will allow me to do anything I can think of... but limits me to a balanced framework where each choice has a cost, and the metastructure of the game enforces a logical construction of characters.

When I fly, I want to understand the "physics" of the game world that enables me to fly... When I kick open a door, or at least try to do so, I want to understand why I succeeded or failed, why I had very little chance in the first place, or that such an act is almost without effort... and I want that statistically structured to be consistent every time a similar action is attempted.

I want a game that helps me simulate action and adventure and combat, so that I really feel like "I" (my character) is taking actions that may have random occurrences (dice) but are not arbitrary decisions (diceless.)  And if I understand and build to the system, I know how strong or weak, how fast or slow, how smart or dense... etc., my character is, in comparison to other characters and the world/environment.

That is what I want in a game... because when that becomes so structurally sound... then it fades into the background and the real role playing can begin.  I can dismiss the stats and points because, like a mathematician looking at a non-linear equation for liquid turbulence and envisioning a waterfall, I can look at a scribble of numbers and words and see Dave Aardven, PI who isn't as "all that" as he thinks he is... or Pulse, the first hero of the new age of heroes... etc. etc.

For this, I run/play Hero System/Champions.  I've played it since First Edition, with all it's typos and bad art... and still play it, despite Steve Long's turning it from a game into Black's Law Dictionary.

It is the most perfect system for what I want... Simulation.  I've really played nothing else in 20 plus years (tried stuff... like Vampire and M&M and Deadlands... but never stopped running Hero.)

Neil

(I will actually "play" Savage Worlds... as it is a fun/light system and works well for a certain style of fantasy game... but I'd never run it.  Too light and arbitrary for my tastes as a GM.)

And I'm new here, and had never heard of this "GNS" theory until just today.  All my talk of simulation is simply my own use of the word as I understand and apply it.  It has no relation to GNS, which I will now go read about in that dedicated forum.

Neil

Hello all,

I've been browsing these boards for a couple days and this seemed like the perfect topic for me to post in first.

In no particular order...

Amber Diceless
The lighter the rules, the easier time I have focusing on the roleplaying.     Every time I have to stop to roll dice, the rules and mechanics of the game distract me from the characters and the story.   For this reason, I have been hooked on Amber for years.   I loved the game long before I ever read the Zelazny novels it was based on and was greatly disappointed with the novels when compared to the Amber I envisioned from the game.

The system has flaws.   It has several of them.   However, the fact that it has no dice, cards, stones or "miracle points" makes it my favorite to play in.    I have trusted the GMsin the Amber games I've played in and therefore have been able to completely ignore the rules and just enjoy myself.

Cinematic Unisystem
This has been a recent discovery for me.   It is the system used in Eden Studio's Buffy and Angel RPGs and will be used in their upcoming Army of Darkness game.

Like I said, I like rules-lite games where the system is non-obtrusive.    However....as a GM, I like to ask for the occassional dice roll from players.    I know that I tend to favor the players in games and I want to make sure I give them the threat of actually failing.     I've struggled for years to find a system that works in my "mostly diceless" philosophy of GMing.  I've applied this GM philosophy to WW's Storyteller, GURPS, Champions and the Palladium system at times with varying levels of success.......but mostly failures.

The Cinematic Unisystem (a.k.a. Unisystem Lite) is the first system I've run that really works for me.   I feel comfortable making diceless calls when a roll is not needed and when I do call for a roll, it only takes one roll of the dice from the players to determine the results.

Best of all, uni-lite (as it would be called in newspeak) is set up that the GM does not roll dice at all, which speeds the game up significantly, leaving more time for the story and roleplaying.


Champions/Hero System
I know.   I just said how much I love games that are light on dice rolling and have simple to use rules and mechanics.   Why would I ever list the "Math-lover's Dream" that is HERO?

I love superheroes.   I've been reading comic books since I was in Junior High School and started roleplaying with Palladium's Heroes Unlimited.   Besides a superhero-genre variation of Amber, Champions has been the only game I've played in that works for the genre.     It has enough rules for the creation of any power you may think of and with rules for things like knock-back, it goes a long way towards simulating the action found in comics.

Besides, sometimes it's fun to build a character in a "crunchy" system where every detail is designed out and you can "min-max" for maximum effect.   Sometimes it's fun to roll buckets of dice.

I'm nowhere near the point where RDU Neil is.....where the system is in the background.   The system in constantly in my face.   However, it's a good system so it's not as annoying as other "crunchy" systems.

I had to jump in and contemplate this topic.  Here goes. . .

Villains & Vigilantes: Probably the second RPG that I ever played (after D&D/AD&D) and still the one for which I hold the fondest memories.  Despite a system with loopholes and lots of math (in three different copies of the rulebook I have seen three different equations for calculating carrying capacity) it worked.  Simple as that.  The art by Jeff Dee was inspirational (it really is unfortunate that he has gotten away from drawing in recent years) and made me want to draw endless heaps of character sketches.  Probably the single best thing that this game had going for it was a horde of playable adventure modules.  Unlike the gaming situation today where companies churn out sourcebook after sourcebook, V&V was accessible to newer gamers because GMs didn't always have to design their own adventures.  The occasional sourcebook is good, but I prefer adventure modules (AD&D used to follow this model too, but eventually they started to flood the market with sourcebooks just like WOD).

Call of Cthulhu: The best "roleplaying" rpg that I have ever played.  I grew up reading Lovecraft so I had no problems getting into the spirit of this game.  I loved the fact that, unlike most games, character death was a very real possibility EACH AND EVERY TIME YOU PLAYED.  The fact that most of the "bad guys" couldn't be killed with a gun forced players to think on their feet and find alternate solutions.  In fact, when it came to combat your character sheet was almost useless (making this pretty close to narrativist in that respect).  You had to roleplay to acquire most of the clues that you would eventually need to solve the mystery.  As a result, characters tended to develop a lot of depth and personality.  Unfortunately, you had to be careful in getting too attached to those characters. . .

Cyberpunk 2020: Wow, did we play a lot of this game.  Why?  Partially because our GM was a William Gibson nut, and partially because we loved the whole "punks with guns" attitude that it presented (must have been the era that we grew up in).  Lifepath was something new and interesting to us at the time. . . it forced players to compose a background for their characters and to develop a personality of some kind.  The game also gave us a reasonably realistic combat system that had lots of numbers and dice to play with (realistic compared to what we had seen before).  It was almost like playing two different games: The first involved roleplaying with attitude and the second was all about dice-chucking and guns.  One of the best parts of this game was the set of "rules of the street" that it provided.  1) Style over substance. 2) Attitude is everything. 3) Always take it to the edge.  That says it all.

MSHAG (Marvel Saga): This is the system that I use for the superhero game that I currently run.  Why?  My players LOVE it and, to be honest, I rather enjoy it too.  It allows combat to be played fast and furious (and combat is the focus of most comic books) and puts a remarkable amount of control in the hands of the players since they are not simply depending on the randomly rolled result of a single die to accomplish anything.  The Doom pool that the GM accumulates and can then use to thwart the players is a brilliant addition to the game since it allows me to incorporate essential plot elements (like the bad guy escapes at the last minute) within the system, thereby preventing players from complaining that it was out of their control.  It also allows me to gauge the combat as it goes. . . if the players are in tough then I let them go, but if they are sweeping the floor with the villains then I can usually pull out some Doom cards to even things up a little.  The powers are also really well done with all of the stunts and limitations that are essential to a Marvel game (and they don't require anywhere near the minutia of design that games like M&M or Champions require).  Although my players use their own characters and I incorporate lots of my own villains, another attraction of this game is that the world is one that is familiar to all of them.  The players are suitable impressed when Spider-Man makes an appearance and know to be scared when someone like Dr. Doom or Magneto might be involved in the current plot.  This also allows me a lot of extra latitude in running unusual sessions like flashback episodes where I give them other characters to play for the night (it's hard to get players to take control of joe npc that you designed just for that purpose but it takes very little convincing to get them to play Captain America and the Sub-Mariner).

Glenn

Hmm, here's my list:

D&D 3E.  What?  You say?  The terrible monster of the industry?  D&D bugs the hell out of me, but there's one thing I can say for it: support, support, support.  That, and there's strong, gamist, player empowerment mechanics.  People can have fun minmaxing the heck out of their character.

Ars Magica.  It was the first game for me that captured the feel of magic as magic.  Magic was a process... you combined things and made other things.  And the troupe style play was pretty revolutionary back then.  So revolutionary that few other games today still do it.

Mage: The Ascension (2nd Edition).  This built on Ars Magica.  I love how you could take it in so many directions: cinematic action, urban fantasy, science fiction, and so on.  Also, the Book of Worlds really captured my imagination.  I thought Mage Revised did a disservice to the game, and I still join into the occasional Mage flame war.

Hero Wars.  The conflict resolution in this game serves to simulate the flow of an event.  Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.  I love this game to death.  

Unknown Armies.  Multiple axes of sanity, in a comprehensible form.  The game was worth the price of admission for that alone.  I recall using the madness meter to track my character's sanity in other games.

Amber Diceless.  One of our big favourites back in high school.  Our games were nothing like the novels, but they were vast, sprawling epics, and characters did all sorts of fun and amazing stuff, unconstrained by rules or min-maxing.

Power Kill.  This "game" made me rethink my relationship to RPG violence.  I'm now a passionate advocate of orc rights.

Well, now that the thread has wound down, I'd thought I'd post my thoughts on all this.  I started this thread because I'm at a point where I'm becoming really dissatisfied with RPGs and am wondering what I actually like about them.

This is what I've come up with:

I like storytelling.  Coming up with stories and sharing your creativity with others is fun.

I like competition.  One-upping everyone else is fun.

Almost everything else about RPGs bores me.

So I guess my favorite RPG (that I've actually played) is The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen.  It's pure storytelling competition.  Another RPG that fits this category is Soap but I haven't managed to play it yet.  Also, Universalis may fit in here but, again, I haven't played it yet.

I also want to thank everyone who has participated in this thread.  It's always enjoyable to see what other people enjoy and why they do.