What makes it your favorite? Do you want to play it? If so, what's keeping you from doing it?
For me, it's Burning Wheel.
I bought it purely based on aesthetics back in 2008ish, then got the supplements, then Gold, then Gold Revised, with the Codex, and the anthology...
I blame it for my weakness for chunky, digest-sized, hardcover RPGs. :P I also like the graphic design, I like the prose (even if it's divisive), and it has both interesting lessons you can plug into other games (like "let it ride," letting success or failure stand instead of making lots of little rolls) and arcane systems that pique my interest (like the Artha cycle, which makes roleplay, metacurrency, skill rolls, and advancement all intersect). I genuinely like reading it for its own sake.
I haven't played it because... well, since it's not D&D, that immediately makes it harder to get people interested, sadly. It's also a bit daunting, given its reputation as a crunchy system. But I have a group of players interested in trying new things, and fewer other games calling for my attention, so hopefully I'll get a chance soon. :)
Making characters in GURPS is so fun. A friend was running a cyberpunk game one time and I brought like 3 characters so I could pick the one that fit the party the best. Sometimes we would just roll up character concepts to see how many points it would take.
I played a lot of GURPS too, but it’s probably my all time favorite character creation system
See, one of the things holding me back is getting overwhelmed by character creation. There's just so much to go through!
What makes me want to try GURPS is that it seems flexible (even light) in play, would adapt to just about any genre, and allows for incremental advancement. But since I'd be the one bringing it to the table, I'd have a heck of a lot to do to make it an easy entry, despite not having played the game yet.
Totally understandable. When I first started playing, the GM made us all premade characters to learn the rules on. Then he made templates for us when we played for real so we just had to pick a “class” and spend a few character points for customization.
GURPS is great for any setting and really shines in settings that involve many tech levels, like time traveling (that’s the default setting, in fact). It can be quite simple and elegant, but there are rules for just about any situation you can think of, and the calculations aren’t always simple because of it. Luckily, all rule blocks are optional. Playing GURPS “Lite” is supported/recommended in the base rulebook and it’s a fully functional system on its own.
Anyway, I just love GURPS. After playing for a while, I started loving the character creation but I agree, it can be quite the barrier to entry. Also, running games and planning sessions is a lot of work for the GM. More than most systems I’ve played. If you’re playing rules-light or don’t mind handwaving a few specifics when building enemies, it’s not as bad. But if you’re going all in and trying to make reusable stat blocks, the joys of character creation will come back to bite you lol
Ah, on the topic of templates, they're also in Dungeon Fantasy, which helps a lot. Though I do wish the "default" settings on DF were a bit lighter.
I know that GURPS Lite is secretly the real core rulebook. :P It's easier to build off of that than go through the Basic Set and sift through everything. How to Be a GURPS GM, IIRC, also helps with things like skill lists.
I think if I ever get a chance to play it, I'd probably start super simple, maybe even with Wildcard skills and some GURPS Action rules to smooth things out, then dial up the complexity until it's at a point I'd like. I appreciate modular systems that let me do that.
I have so many that I’ve come across over the years but never had a chance to try. Many of them have been mentioned by others so I’ll just throw in a fresh one: Mouseguard.
The setting just feels so cozy but also heroic. Something akin to a video game like Tunic. The rules are actually quite dense though, so I’ve never gotten buy-in from any players. But it’s one of those golden egg games that I’d really love to play some day
I actually want to check that out too, since it's in the Burning Wheel orbit. :P
That and Torchbearer, but as much as I loved the books, I think it's the last among the three. (Though I still really want to play it.)
Yeah, Burning Wheel is high up on my list as well. I know the games are related, but I don’t know enough about either of them to know exactly how similar they are
I'm not an expert on the three either, but here's my understanding:
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Burning Wheel is the oldest of the three, the most complicated, and geared towards dramatic fantasy stories. It's replicating classic fantasy novels and the like.
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Mouseguard came out next, is significantly simpler, and obviously made to evoke the feeling of the comics it's based on.
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Torchbearer is the newest of the three, is an intermediate level of complexity, and geared towards dungeon crawling and the like. Think old-school RPG with a Burning Wheel chassis.
I still haven't got my hands on Mouseguard, and I'd love to try all of them at some point. It just breaks towards Burning Wheel for me, to begin at the beginning—but they all have a unique appeal. :)
You can actually do some really cool low-magic / low-power games with Burning Wheel there is a pretty good let's play channel (can't recall the name, think it's Patronage) that uses Burning Wheel to explore the players as artisans in a Renaissance analog.
From what I understand, a big difference of BW compared to a lot of fantasy is that it is fantastic at character forward play, with the game looking like a series of vignettes with each character as opposed to a singular scene of the adventuring party. Which can be great when you want to do a political intrigue a la GoT where one player is a magically inclined daughter of a farmer, one player is the bastard son of the corrupt and ailing king, and the third is a veteran captain of the guard to the king. With BW, you can have each character's Beliefs / Instincts help guide the game towards the ascent of the bastard to the throne, but for a good chunk of the game each player's "scenes" may not connect the other players. Some good advice I've seen on this is to have the players whose characters are not in the scene actually RP the NPCs, which I've yet to do but sounds great in theory.
I did find a Burning Wheel LP with that name, so I'll have to check it out!
There's also a podcast I loved called Campaign, and since a lot (all?) of the cast were improvisers, they would hop into scenes as NPCs quite often. (I'm pretty over that podcast, but when I liked it, that was one of my favorite parts.) I tried that in other games, but it was a bit hard to get non-improvisers to get into it. I'll have to try again!
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Genesys. Technically. I've played the Star Wars FFG system that eventually became Genesys (and loved it), but I haven't played Genesys itself. I even own the Genesys dice, but I lack anyone else to roll them with.
I finally got a physical copy of the Genesys rules last year, but I’m in the same boat. I played in a Star Wars game for a couple years and I love the system but I doubt I’ll ever have a group to play Genesys with
Vampire the Masquerade, if only because I'm not into being bad guys. Love the vibes, vamps are fun, but I find it just a little too dark to want to RP as or write about.
It also kind of sucks that 5e apparently makes it mandatory to be bad guys. One of the announcements pretty much said that if you're not playing miserable and truly irredeemable monsters, you're having bad wrong fun.
For what it's worth, apparently the older editions can be played as "goth superheroes." You'd still grapple with dark themes, but get to, you know... succeed against them.
You could look into Hunter: the Reckoning same vibes but you are a urban fantasy / paranormal investigator fighting the evil while trying to keep hold of your humanity / reason to hunt.
I've run VtM a good bit and it can be difficult hence the important of a session zero to establish lines/veils, for me I had to say I'm going to veil the hunt scenes.
Satasupe. It's a Japanese ttrpg. The name is a shortening of Saturday Night Special, and the game focuses on zany crime capers. I did a translation of it for a friend but nothing much came of it. If your character ever became too good or evil, they became an NPC, which was a nice mechanic to keep players from acting like saints or demons. https://d66roc.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/happy-15th-anniversary-satasupe/
Ah, that reminds me of City of Mist, where leaning too hard towards your mundane or supernatural side would do the same.
I've also found it interesting how vibrant the Japanese tabletop RPG scene seems to be, but how little of it makes its way over here. It seems like there'd be a huge market for it.
Ars Magica but Burning wheel is a close second. I run and play modern/sci-fi 90% of the time as I got burned out on fantasy setting but I hold a candle for running/playing a theme campaign of a Mage Guild in ars Magica or a Theives guild in Burning Wheel.
Ah, Ars Magica is another one. I found it as a teenager browsing the internet. I even downloaded the free PDF they offered and started printing it out, before realizing just how much paper that would be. :P
There is a ttrpg youtuber that did a video on Harnmaster mentioning he uses the Ars Magica magic system in that game which sounds like an absolute delight. Me, Myself & Die is the channel name. I love crunchy systems (I've been gamemastering Shadowrun since 3rd edition) and I've wanted to get into a fantasy crunchy system but stars have not aligned ... yet. I've played and ran PF2e a lot and while the three action economy is fantastic and the world-building is delightful (Golarian's kingdomds of Geb & Nex are so unique) I really don't care for Vancian magic or class systems.
Huh, I hadn't thought of that, since PF2e is mostly poised as a D&D alternative rules system, but the setting must be popular given the existence of Savage Pathfinder... I'll have to do more digging into the lore!
I've also had this thought that I was burnt out on crunchier RPGs, before reading PF2e and realizing, no, I'm just tired of fighting against a rules system. :P I'd love to get in some crunchier games, too, so long as they work properly and deliver on their design goals.
and I'll have to check out Me, Myself & Die! I think I've heard the name before.
From way back in the days, Valley of the Pharaohs. While not my first game that attempted to be historically accurate (that honour falls to Chivalry & Sorcery) it was the first such game I found that not only tried to be historically accurate but also supplied loads of supporting material for it. (This was more important pre-Internet than it is now because it was both time-consuming and hard to find good, solid historical information that was usable in play.)
But I could never interest anybody in playing it.
So there's this Spanish rpg called The Door of Ishtar, which takes place in Mesopotamia after Zargon the Great defeats the Sumerians and founds Akkad. Such a rich world that I had to buy. I know I'll never get to play it though.
Why is it so hard for people to read the blurb on the right?:
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(Emphasis entirely mine.)
I want to play a lot more Chronicles of Darkness, but most people prefer fantasy or sci-fi and those who want urban horror prefer World of Darkness. They don't market it well.
I've also never played Blades in the Dark game. I think I need someone else to DM it for me first. I don't really have PBTA down, my mind hasn't quite grasped it yet.
I also want to check out a BitD game, or at least one of the other genres that make use of the system. I've read it, and it does break new ground in TTRPG design but it just hasn't happened yet.
Star wars FFG and Deadlands. I love the flavor of both. I doubt I'll ever play star wars, but some of my current groups will probably give deadlands a try.
Deadlands is so cool, the Weird West genre has such potential!
Blade of Arcana, an untranslated japanese game with a tarot card gimmick. From my understanding it's a mostly standard d20 only game but I'm really curious how they managed to incorporate the cards into its gameplay. Unfortunately I don't speak Japanese so I can't read it.
I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I find it wild how few Japanese RPGs make it over with a translation. It seems like there's a vibrant tabletop RPG scene there, and I'd bet there's a huge market here, but it just rarely happens.
I would like to give Scum & Villainy a go. Have the book, but not managed to get a game. Yet! I won't give up. :)
Dragonbane.
yet...
It looks like it should work perfectly fine for a campaign like B/X DandD, but without character levels, spell slots, the weird attack roll system, and with skills. All the rules for wandering monsters, reaction rolls, and morale that make B/X great can just be added to Dragonbane almost as is.
I got the game, mostly for the things you mentioned. A lot if it is familiar D&D, in an old-school style, with some tweaks I like. It seems really flexible, and probably compatible with a lot of OSR stuff I already have. Plus the box set seems like it'd be a great kit for on-the-fly games.
So I'd also love to get it to the table sometime!
pretty much a 3rd of my steam library...
If I had to pick one, maybe Kerbal Space Program
