Our Next Game System

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 28, 2008

Filed under: Tabletop Games 182 comments

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My gaming group is about to wrap up a campaign, our fourth and final in this setting. The homebrew setting I came up with three years ago is about to be retired for good. It’s been added onto as the setting changed hands. It started out with a group of level 1 characters working to save a small group of towns. Then escalated to saving an island, then the region, and finally – assuming we don’t all snuff it in the next couple of sessions – the world. I think it’s time to hang it up and begin a new tale.

But now the question comes: What do we play next? D&D 3.5 is all this particular group has ever played, although a couple of the members have played other games elsewhere. I’m not actually huge on the standard D&D fantasy setting. In fact, among the eight people in the group, only one of us prefers fantasy. The problem is, the rest of us all want something different. Star Wars. Pirates. Cyberpunk. Superheroes. The giant robot stuff. Vampires. Werewolves. Everyone has a different “favorite” that is despised by the rest of the group. We play in our homebrew fantasy world because it’s our only common ground.

If I had my choice I’d play some sort of space opera. It could be Star Wars, but it wouldn’t have to be. (Although if I ran a Star Wars game, I’d set it on my own made up worlds rather than dragging the party through the locales we keep visiting in the movies. Too often Lucas’ universe feels like a galaxy of a hundred million stars and eight planets. Sigh. I’d want to go somewhere new where we wouldn’t have Star Was canon dragging behind us like so much baggage.) Although for me, the game system itself is more important than setting. Great stories can take place in any genre. Great stories can’t take place if you spend all your time deciphering and fighting about The Rules.

So what should we play? What setting? What game system? It’s a tough call. We all have different goals and reasons for playing the game, so the challenge is to find some middle ground where we can all be content.

I’m at least as eccentric as the next guy, so I’m not going to pretend that this list is in any way reasonable. Having said that, in a perfect world my gaming system would have:

* Bell curve. I dislike the chaos encouraged by the flat d20 system. The bell curve formed by rolling two or more dice together appeals to me a great deal. It makes “special” events more special.

* Fun dice. I don’t like systems which rely on huge handfuls of boring old d6’s. The seven piece dice set is amusing and fun. There is a tactile appeal to using them. Yes, I realize that this conflicts with the previous item, as most bell-curve systems use two or three d6’s.

* Roleplaying over Strategy. Mechwarrior is not a bad thing, but it’s not for me. Any game where combat takes more than twenty minutes is a game where I’m going to get bored. I’m there to play a character and weave a story. If you want to play Risk, just say so and we can play Risk. But don’t ask me to develop a deep character and then funnel me through a series of long fights where the only use for my backstory is as a dice-rolling surface. Some players see the story as an excuse to chain a bunch of battles together, because that’s why they’re there. I see combat as a natural, emergent result of the goals of the player conflicting with the goals of NPC’s in the game. I can handle “arbitrary” fights in moderation, but if the fight isn’t directly related to the overall goal, I’m not going to be excited about it.

* Easy to learn rules. See also the Great Debate on Attacks of Opportunity. I can see why people write rules for grapple, overrun, AOO, etc. If you don’t have those rules, then the game will have lots of exploitable holes. A fighter will be able to run past a hedge of guards and attack the King in a single turn without risking harm, which doesn’t make sense. The problem is that plugging these holes requires twenty pages of rules, rolls, guidelines, and exceptions, which is just more crap to memorize and argue about. The whole system becomes an anchor around the neck of people who want to finish with the combat and get back to the game itself. I’d rather encourage players to respect the limits through in-game thinking rather than beating them into line with a bunch of pedantic regulations.

* Simple combat system. I can enjoy a system where I roll 1d20, and add my related skill modifier, then compare it to target number X. A system where I roll a die, add a modifier, then subtract some other modifiers, then divide by something and round up or down to hit a target number determined by the GM rolling the dice and doing similar calculations? This is not a game for me. It harkens back to the Mechwarrior players. Some people live for that number-crunching strategy. Nothing wrong with that, but I prefer to play that sort of thing on the computer and let the software handle the details for me. If I’m at the table with other human beings, I’m there to roleplay, dangit.

One player wants deep stratetgy. (Mechwarrior.) Another plays to amass loot and power, and prefers epic-level gaming. A couple of us really just want to play interesting characters in a compelling, believeable setting. Another one wants to be the strongest character in the group, and would really like to have PvP.

It’s amazing things go as smoothly as they do, considering our cross-purposes. The group is too big for my taste. It’s hard to roleplay in an eight-man gang. I’d suggest we split the group, but I don’t have time for two games at once, and since we meet at my house “splitting” the group would feel too much like “kicking some people out in favor of others”.

As tired as I am of D&D, it looks like it’s the only system that can be all things to all people. The other systems mostly specialize in ways that would alienate one or more players.

 


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182 thoughts on “Our Next Game System

  1. John Callaghan says:

    Well, Over The Edge might be worth a look. It does use d6s but is elegant and fast. GMs and players are encouraged to let their imaginations go a bit wild in a familiar (-ish) setting and it may cover the miscellaneous ambitions of the players you’ve described above. As a setting, I’m also a huge fan of 2nd Ed. Mage (although I haven’t read the new version).
    Neither of those is very space-y, though, although the OTE system is very adaptable for new genres. My inclination would be to work out the game world and the system separately.

  2. MintSkittle says:

    You could have your friends write down the three games they want to play the most, giving each one 1, 2, or 3 points, based on which one they want to play most. Gather the results from everybody and tally the points. The game with the most points is the next game you play.

  3. Bogan the Mighty says:

    I definitely think we should go for star wars. If not 7th sea for pirates and Dark Heresy for warhammer 40k space head exploding goodness. Of course I’ve already given my two cents earlier about it.

  4. Turgid Bolk says:

    QAGS (Quick Ass Gaming System) seems to fit the bill, except for the bell curve. It uses d20 only, for ease of use. But it is very easy to learn, can be used for any setting, and combat can be run based on description alone instead of on a mat, if you like. It tends to go quicker that way. It’s also pretty cheap ($15 dollars at the QAGS site, even cheaper at some other sites, especially if you get the pdf instead of the physical book.) You can take a look at http://www.hexgames.com/main/qags2e and also check out the simplified quick-start rules here: http://www.hexgames.com/main/qikstart

    The book is hilarious, but your game can be funny or serious as you like. It might be a little too light for the number-crunchers, but for anybody else it should work well :)

    I find it a breath of fresh air after playing D&D.

  5. Yera Meyahu says:

    I always loved Alternity for space/future, but it’s pretty old and very defunct at this point. Still, it has ‘fun’ dice, more than a single control die, and a comprehensive skill system.

    (Below: isn’t *every* GURPS game a dimension-and-time-hopping group of fools?)

  6. Strangeite says:

    GURPS. I know of no other system that allows such a wide range of possibilities for both characters and settings. GURPS would fit every single criteria that you have set out above with the exception of using lots of cool dice. The source material for different settings is EXTENSIVE. Also, almost all of their printed material can be bought in an electronic format for far less money than buying the actual printed book. The combat system is scaled so that it can be very simple but also has the components to scale it up to allow a very detailed tactical campaign.

    I had a very similar situation with a gaming group, where one wanted a fantasy campaign, another a horror, another a sci-fi and another a conspiracy setting. With GURPS, I just created a campaign where the party was a dimension and time hopping bunch of fools. I can’t describe how much fun it was the first time the near-future para-military bad guy felt the wrath of the fantasy era wizard. Or the time that the Roswell-esque aliens had to deal with the minions of Cthulu.

    And you can download the Basic Rules from Steve Jackson’s website for free.

    Edit: Also you garner a lot of geek cred points when you add Gurps to your Geek Resume.

  7. Mike the ExDragon says:

    My current infatuation is Spirit of the Century, which is built on the “Fate System” which is based on the “Fudge System”… It’s got the bell curve. Fun dice? iffy on that one, it uses modified D6. Roleplaying over strategy? 100%! Simple to learn? Absolutely! Simple combat system? Yup on that too. If you haven’t seen it, pick it up and see if it’s your kind of thing.

  8. Patriarch917 says:

    I had the exact same criteria as you about a year ago when trying to pick a new system and setting. I did a lot of research, looked at every system and setting I could find, and even toyed with designing my own.

    What I landed on was the Serenity Role Playing Game, and I’m very happy.
    Bell curve? check.
    Fun dice? every roll. This was a huge factor for me, because I just loved dice. Even the d20 system wasn’t enough for me. With Serenity, you will hardly make two rolls in a row that use the same dice.
    Role playing over strategy? the “assets”, “complications”, and “plot point” system strongly encourage character development in such a way that a well played character does better in combat than someone who just has high stats.
    Easy to learn rules? the system was so intuitive several player never bothered to read anything but the two page rule summary and the flavor text.
    Simple Combat system? Attack roll – defense roll weapon roll = damage dealt.

    The setting allows you to slide easily from western to space opera to horror whenever you want, and it all makes sense. There’s dozens of planets and characters with simple one or two paragraph descriptions that are just enough to inspire without constraining you. The technology level can be any range you want without feeling arbitrary. Insulting people in Chinese slang is hella fun.

    I ran this game for six players, and it never felt like anyone lacked spotlight time. It’s perfect for big groups who like to mix in a little intra-party friction. The ship-and-crew setup is optional of course, but it’s such a fantastic way to put a group of diverse characters together that I’m tending to use it in other settings.

    If you haven’t checked this out yet, I suggest it. I’d be really curious to see your reaction to it.

  9. Shawn says:

    Savage Worlds!

    I almost mailed you a copy for Christmas, but I’m freaking broke.

  10. Davesnot says:

    GURPs… hands down… the problem?? all the fancy dice go away… so you have to come up with some other reasons to roll the other polyhedrals.. but the stuff that really matters… the bell curve of 3d-6 is it…

    plus.. you can use any of your gaming stuff.. just mush it into the system (or painstakingly convert it)..

    so.. if I haven’t said this yet.. GURPS.. .. toss in some world books to start with so you don’t have to convert stuff until you know the system better ..

    and if I haven’t said this yet… GURPS.

  11. Tom says:

    When I was in college, a group of friends convinced me to try playing Call Of Cthulu after being a die-hard D&D player for years, and as far as enjoyability and role playing, I’ve still found it to be an exceptional game when well-run. It also gives you a ‘believable’ setting with just enough weirdness to make it exciting and fun.

  12. Bogan the Mighty says:

    Oh boy a Serenity game for Shamus…that could be bad. From what I’ve heard though it isn’t all that bad a game. The people at our local comic book shop just prefer other games over it.

  13. Uninverted says:

    M&M is my personal favorite. I like it because it gives you loads and loads of freedom; you can make just about anything. But because of this, there’s a lot of loopholes and exploits. You can literally summon five million monsters in one turn. This might satisfy the last guy a little too much. But if your group is mature enough, it can be a pretty good system that stays out of your way (And bonus points for being easy to change to from regular d20).

  14. wererogue says:

    Our group’s favorite trick is that people can run whatever game they like, and people will play whichever game they like. That way there’s no arguing over the setting – the DM has picked it. And we (sometimes they) are glad enough that there is a game being run that we think the GM deserves to be able to explore her/his choice of setting.

  15. Nilus says:

    First, the games you have on the right. Friends don’t let Friends play Rifts. I don’t think you can legally play Rifts if you are over the age of 16. Its the Law.

    That being said, I agree that your group might like Savage worlds. Its a simpler system then D20 but it still has a lot of crunch factor. If you guys are thinking Star Wars, I recommend the new Saga edition. Its a refinded version of D20 that strips a lot of more confusing rules out of itself to make the game run quicker.

  16. Nephele says:

    My group alternates between Call of Cthulhu and Runequest. We play the old school Chaosium versions. D100 skill checks, no character classes, base stats don’t (often) change but skill levels can go up with use, DEX based fight sequences with attacks and parry or dodge. Once you’ve created the character it’s easy to play. We’re a long standing group (some of us have been playing together for 25 years) so we long ago threw out any rules that annoyed us (fatigue) and have a few minor homebrew add ons.

    The basic rules system works pretty well in any genre. Are Cthulhu games have run in 1600s, 1800s, 1900s and modern day without any real problems.

  17. Ghoul says:

    I’d second Spirit of the Century for a big old pulp funtime or push for Dogs in the Vineyard”, though the later is not a good fit for a large group. It’s on the more edgy side of things, with some hard moral choices unavoidable (after all, they’re the object of things), but if you’re up for that, there’s hardly better. Religious circuit judges in a demon-haunted Old West… Very thematic, very fun. But not to everyone’s tastes. Certainly uses lots of funky dice, though (more d4 than you’d ever imagine, plus d6, d8, and d10), and offers lots of role-playing focused strategy (the two are rather elegantly mixed by the way the system works).

    And, while support has dried up except for one book just recently, there’s always the amazing cool action movie vibe of Feng Shui that simply isn’t to be missed. Yeah, just 2d6, but makes up for it in extremes of butt-kicking.

  18. Eric says:

    Earthdawn? It’s got fun dice, bell curve, a pretty straightforward system. I’ll be able to testify to ease-of-learning in a couple of weeks — I’m about to start running it for my group, none of whom have played it before.

    Earthdawn is usually described as fantasy/horror, but the horror part can be dialed up or down based on what kind of adventures the GM runs.

  19. You might want to check out Scion from White Wolf which is set in the modern world and features PCs of extraordinary power.

    Bell curve – Kinda. You roll huge handfuls of D10s looking for 7s and up, the number you roll depends on your skill + ability.

    Fun dice – D10s. Lots and lots of D10s.

    Roleplaying over Strategy. Combat does tend to take a while, but is spiced up by rewarding players who do fun and dramatic things with bonus dice. It is rare that you end up in a “I hit him with my sword” moment.

    Easy to learn rules – yup, they aren’t too complicated

    Simple combat system – it doesn’t really hit this spot I’m afraid.

    Regarding comments from other people. Spirit of the Century looks awesome, and I’m looking forward to playing my first game next month. You can listen to some actual play from the Rolemonkeys. Call Of Cthulhu also rocks.

  20. Strangeite says:

    Regarding all the posts suggesting Call Of Cthulhu, while I love this game and it holds a very soft spot in my heart, I don’t think it works very well with large groups. What really makes that game work is the atmosphere and when you have groups over about three or four, you tend to lose that necessary horror atmosphere because of group dynamics.

  21. Shamus says:

    My gaming collection is still quite small: D&D 3.5, Star Wars (d20) and GURPS.

    I’d love me some Serinity, but I wouldn’t want to play unless everyone at the table was a fan. Some people give the show a big shrug. It has that “everyone else loves it so much that I hate it” effect going on, and those people aren’t going to have any fun.

    My worry with Star Wars is still the same:

    * It sucks being a regular guy in a party with Jedi.
    * Some people don’t see the point of playing the game if they can’t be Jedi.
    * Running a game of ALL Jedi would be… uninteresting to me.

    I’d prefer we were all just regular dudes, and save Jedi characters for Sagemaster / Elrond type NPC’s.

    But that’s just me, and I know of at least one player who will be very frustrated if he can’t be a Jedi.

    Sigh.

    I have a setting I’m working on for fun. We’ll see where it leads.

  22. Mike says:

    BESM d20 – Big Eyes Small Mouth. Yes, it’s anime, but you don’t have to play it that way. It is more flexible than D&D or GURPS while more fun to play than most other games based on d20, simpler rules, etc.

    For instance, our current party is composed of a vampire, a sorceress from D&D, a jedi knight, a cybered-up warrior from shadowrun, a faery from , a princess from some anime world, a half-orc, and a fire-powered cat-lady from a world based on ancient egypt.

  23. Lebkin says:

    “* Fun dice.”

    This request wouldn’t have anything to do with those new beautiful dice your wife bought you, would it?

    As for your next game, I second Ghoul’s suggestion of Dogs in the Vineyard. My limited experience has been absolutely wonderful. It uses a lot of different size dice, and you get to use them in large numbers as well. The resolution system is extremely flexible and full of role-playing content.

  24. Bogan the Mighty says:

    Actually I think he is the only one that wants to be a Jedi, Shamus. I personally want to play the pansy that gets himself in trouble and leaves the Jedi with no choice, but to pull me out of the fire.

  25. Calle says:

    Since others have already suggested GURPS a number of times, I’ll drop in a mention of “Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game”. It’s definitely not everybody’s cup of tea, but if you want rules-light over-the-top (usually waaaaaay over) multi-world action, few systems and backgrounds deliver like Amber DRPG.

  26. Shamus says:

    Bogan: I’ll bet you’re right. But he’s set on it. I’m worried making him a Jedi will make him stand out even MORE from the rest of the group. It’ll be like having a party of Aragorn, Boromir, Sam, Frodo, and Captain Kirk. Everyone else will be trying to roleplay and discover the nuances of their chosen character, and he’ll be trying to chain-lightning the shopkeeper for a 10% discount on body armor he can’t even wear.

  27. Woot Spitum says:

    If everyone in your group has a different first choice as far as next system to be played, you could ask them to list three to five systems each that they would be interested in playing to find some more common ground. As far as systems I’d reccomend, I have yet to see anything I seriously dislike about Star Wars: Saga Edition. And of course D&D 4th Edition promises to shake things up when it comes out.

  28. Tango says:

    Have you considered Ironclaw, Jadeclaw, or Albedo from Sanguine Productions?

  29. pffh says:

    I can recommend the star wars saga edition it fulfills all your points except the bell curve one and is quite balanced. Only the jedis are a bit more powerful then the other characters but that can easily be fixed with home rules or just tiny bit more work for the DM to plan encounters and such.
    And for the person wanting to be a jedi you can always use my approach make him a jedi, as in not only the class but also all the restrictions, codes and whatnot that jedis have.

  30. Adamantyr says:

    When no game system meets your criteria, create your own!

    The FUDGE system is really good for that, and it does have unique dice… albeit they’re really just D6’s with symbols instead of numbers. The real value of the system is that it’s as complex or simple as you want it to be.

    My personal approach would be to come up with some rough character guidelines and let the players do the legwork of designing the system FOR you, by letting their own characters define what it means to be a “wizard”, “superhero”, and so forth. A time/dimension hopping setting would also let you satisfy all their genre desires.

  31. Chris says:

    You might look at Monte Cook’s World of Darkness. It’s set in modern times, and has humans, vampires, werewolves and demons in it. It does not use a bell curve, though, and I think that combat may, at higher levels, take too long for you taste.

  32. EK says:

    One system I played, and always wanted to go back to, was The Prince’s Kingdom (TPK). I’ve been told that it’s much like “Dogs in the Vineyard”, but I’ve never played DitV, so I don’t know.

    But TPK has a lot of the things you’re looking for. It was designed to get kids into RPing, so it’s pretty darn simple to learn. Everything, even combat, is centered around role-playing and thinking up new ways to handle problems. There’re enough dice (d4, d6, and d8, with maybe 10 in use, total, at a time) to satisfy the need for that clickity-clack, and to balance out the occasional 1; once rolled you have to use the dice strategically.

    The game-world that’s included is intentionally sparse, so no worries about having to adhere to canon you didn’t conceive of. It’s also open-ended enough that you can throw in pretty much whatever you want, or mutate it to your own needs.

    So, I like it. And I don’t remember the PDF being terribly expensive either. Full disclosure: I’m not affiliated with anyone affiliated with TPK in any way, but it’d be cool if I was.

  33. Shamus says:

    The thing about Jedi isn’t really their power – although that can be a problem – but their nature in relation to the story. We can get involved in smuggling, spying, intrigue, and what-have-you, but the moment “Luke” shows up the story stops being about our group of guys and starts being about what our group of guys is doing for and with the Jedi. Jedi are by their nature major players on the galactic stage. They bring about major events. They attract major players. They get involved with major politics. They don’t slum around on the edges of the galaxy taking odd jobs and mucking about with low-level crap. It’s like Elrond hanging around Hobbiton and getting involved in squabbles with the Sackville-Baginses. He’s supposed to be above that sort of petty crap.

    You can get around this with writing, by setting up a situation specifically to anchor the Jedi to this group of nobodies. It could work, but it would feel like an odd hack. I’d just as soon keep Jedi in their proper place – powerful, mysterious, and distant. Not following you around and taking a cut of the loot.

  34. Lynx says:

    Well… I don’t think you’ll play this, but I would like your opinion on this:

    Warhammer 40,000 Role Playing Game: Dark Heresy

    Percentile system, and base on the older Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. I’ve only been recently introduced and I’m not totally comfortable with the system (particularly since it seems to be very easy for the GM to trip up and accidentally kill a PC..) but the 40K universe is very rich and a lot of possibilities are available.

    The added benefit is that you (and your group) probably won’t know anything about the universe, so that sets everyone on an even footing.

    Just tossing out ideas, but I would really like to hear what experienced gamers think of the system.

  35. Shawn says:

    Ok, with more time and words:

    Savage Worlds is what you want to play. Listen to me, I know.

    First off, go ahead and download the Quickstart rules to get a feel for the system:

    http://www.peginc.com/Games/SavageWorlds/Downloads/TestDrive.pdf

    All of your stats are based on die types. So if you suck at something, you might have a d4 in it. If you’re the best ever, you have a d12, plus bonuses and stuff.

    They just put out a digest sized version of the core book, for only $10, so you can get a few copies without breaking the bank.

    There are a number of setting books, each with a built in campaign, so you can run a high seas pirate adventure or super villains or fight cthuloid monsters in vietnam or zombies in the old west or whatever. This will be handy for the comic when you want to tackle different genres in the future.

    The system is built to handle fast, action packed combat. Seriously, D&D 3.x combat seems painfully slow now that I’ve played Savage Worlds. Painfully slow. At the end of my big steampunk/fantasy campaign, we had a big battle with the bad guys, with I think 80 minis on the table, that went by in an hour and a half. A typical fight can take just minutes. This means you can either pack in more and more combat, or you know, use the rest of your game session doing plot and character development stuff.

    Anyway, it hits every single one of your points. (The bell curve is a bit hidden, between your trait die and the Wild Die, but it’s there, for the main characters (PCs and major npcs) at least. Mooks are well, mooks.)

  36. Shamus says:

    Man, I was at the comic book store and had the Savage Worlds book in my hands yesterday, but then got distracted when I started talking to the owner about Understanding Comics*. I put it down and forgot about it. Yeah, that sounds like what I want.

    * He didn’t have it. Neither did the bookstore. Or the library. Sigh. The evil bastards at Amazon.com win again. I keep saying I’m not going to shop there, but I keep running into situations where they are the only ones who can get the job done right.

  37. Dan says:

    Try a one-night game of Dread to cleanse the pallette.

    A guaranteed showstopper – lots of psychology and roleplaying and a certain climax. The drawback? Newton’s Law of Gravity will be employed.

  38. Shawn says:

    So you’re saying a book I suggested you buy kept you from getting a game I suggested you buy? I’ve foiled myself!

  39. Roam says:

    Admittedly, I am rather new to roleplaying, although it has intrigued me for years. It just never caught on much where I live, and thus I lacked any ability to get acquainted with it in my youth.

    Thus when I noticed the ability to join a roleplaying group on a local forum I visit, I immediately grabbed hold of the opportunity.

    Now, the reason why I mention this is because we use quite the interesting system. The setting is called Syndicate, I believe, and the game is essentially almost entirely depended on the GM. You build your character by spending Character Points on certain attributes that are then used by the GM as an indication of the likelihood of succeeding actions.

    The entire thing is extremely cinematic. Instead of rolling dice for damage on an enemy, it’s all about trying to use the situation at hand and roleplaying within the scenario given. The GM will then decide (By rolling dice, or whatever other means) how the world reacts to the actions taken by the players.

    Currently, we are playing a Cyberpunk setting, set maybe 50 years in the future. Implants and Biomechanization is common within military applications, but normal ballistic weaponry is still the norm. The world is largely governed by large scale corporations through economical manipulation.

    I enjoy it immensely, mostly because I care more about roleplaying than I do about extensive combat dice rolling and calculating damage modifiers etc. In that regards, I get the sense that you and I are similiar in that, Shamus.

    On my very first session, our party was engaged in a parking lot by a number of corporate thugs. In my very first roleplaying session ever, I got to roll across the hood of a moving vehicle while pulling a gun from its holster and giving the driver the middle finger (Natural twenty for the win!), then managed to screw up my landing, and had to sprint after the car as it gained speed.

    The car had to turn, giving me the chance to try and leap through the open side window (My character was an extremely agile acrobat kinda guy), as a result of which I rammed my head into one of the seats, leaving me momentarily dazed and dropping my gun. I struggled with the driver, and in the process got shot twice, grazing the side of my chest.

    As this occurred, a friend of mine managed to dispatch his foe, saw me struggling and decided to throw a smoke grenade into the vehicle, seeing as how I had Eye augmentations that would give me a significant advantage. However, the struggle in the car continued, and the smoke grenade ended up hitting me in the head, but I just managed to plant a knife in the driver’s throat before passing out.

    While this occured, the rest of the group had their own similiar struggles, ranging from a traumatized 9 year old cancer patient(The parking lot was an underground hospital lot) who was protected but traumatized for life to a gunfight of epic proportions between two marksmen.

    All in all, the players had the freedom to roleplay, while the GM had a list of everyone’s character sheets and used dice to predict how things would occur. It requires a good GM, I would presume, but I highly recommend it. :)

    Let me find the link…

    http://rpr.kapsi.fi/RIP/syndicate/

    There we go. :) That’s the website of the guy who created it, he’s a Real life friend of my GM. :) I hope someone enjoys it.

  40. Andy P says:

    I’d also mention Dark Heresy, we’re about to start our first campaign and it looks like it could be fun. (It may help that we’re mostly 40K players to a greater or lesser degree, though).

    It also has a free “introductory scenario” which you can check out on the website which someone linked to above. You can at least get a taster for the rules and setting from it, even if you don’t actually play it before starting your campaign.

    We’ve just finished playing L5R RPG, which was OK, some good things about it, others not so great. I’ll be honest though – I’m first and foremost a miniatures wargamer, and play RPGs mainly for a chance to hang out with my mates (some of whom have neither the budget nor inclination to play wargames).

  41. Nentuaby says:

    http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16199&cat=0&page=1

    Spirit of the Century (I notice it’s been seconded at least already) for the win. It has every one of the elements you noted above (except maybe the dice bit, but at least you use your 6s in a really novel way). It is, by default, a 1920s pulp roleplaying game, but the system is so flexible and story-centric that it adapts like a breeze to just about anything else- It’s been played, and done admirably, with modern, futuristic, fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk, even Supers. Even “Spirit of the Force,” the Star Wars version.

    Check it out. You will NOT regret it.

  42. khorboth says:

    I recently ran into this same dilemma. My solution is the Campaign Prospectus.

    Come up with 5 things that you’d like to GM for the group. Figure out which system would work best for each, and write a brief description. Try to keep all 5 on one page, but touch on themes, settings, combat level etc.

    Then you pass this out to all your players. Give them 25 points to distribute among the 5 options. No more than 10 in one campaign, and no two campaigns can have the same score.

    This pulls a lot more of the collaborative nature of RPG into the idea process and lets you know what people hate, like, love, kinda-like etc.

    I feel like choosing system before genre is putting the cart before the horse.

  43. Jahnoth says:

    I’ll put in my $0.02 for Savage Worlds. It’s tagline is: Fast! Furious! Fun!

    And I have to admit, it really is. It’s versatile. You can play any genre you want, and Pinnacle has published many settings and toolkits to help you build the world you want.

    If you lived nearby in Ohio, I’d host a game for you just to show you how quick and easy it is to learn.

  44. BlackJaw says:

    I’ve got to say that all the target ideas Shamus has are the ideas I like.
    I’d go ahead and add in:
    * Mook/Minion rules
    * Combat that is fun, not just damage stats.
    * A way to anchor story to gameplay.

    That last one is something I liked about Secret of Z’ran and the Burning Wheel games. Character creation is effectively backstory creation. If you’re a power gamer, you get a minimal backstory as you power build. If you’re a story type, your backstory gives you your abilities. Too bad both game systems are a little wacky otherwise.

    I haven’t played Savage Worlds but it is something I’ve looked at a few times. I think it was the basic system for a few games, including the Army of Darkness role playing game (which had a broken “Chosen one” setup that explicitly made one character more important then the others.)

    Truth be told I’ve been cobbling together my own system for a while now. I don’t know if it will ever be ready to be played, but it’s a fun past time. In the mean time I just play whatever I can get everyone to enjoy.

  45. Kevin says:

    I have to throw in a plug for Unknown Armies here, ‘cos I’d love to see more people playing it. Despite the connotations of the word “plug,” I am in no way affiliated with the producers of the game… I just think it’s a brilliant system in a fascinating setting and not enough people know about it or play it. Let’s see…

    Bell Curve/Fun Dice: The core mechanic of UA is d100/2d10, with some interesting permutations – for instance, under certain circumstances you can “flip” your roll, exchanging the ones die with the tens die. For most opposed checks, you’re shooting for a roll under your own skill but over your opponent’s skill/defense or whatever. I know the d100 roll doesn’t provide a bell curve, but the specific results of a success or failure are keyed to the total of the two dice (hence my calling it a d100/2d10 system). There are also special results for rolling doubles, and for rolling 01 or 00.

    Roleplaying Over Strategy: UA encourages this. The core book stresses repeatedly how lethal combat is, and how you’ll probably want to avoid it as much as you can. Actual combat runs pretty fast and is, as promised, quite lethal.

    Easy to Learn Rules: In the beginning, you’ll probably have to look a few things up in the core book, but once you internalize the mechanics the rules are quite streamlined, and depend a lot on improvisation. There are few hard-and-fast rules for the specific modifiers you get in certain situations, which attacks are privileged, and that kind of stuff. The possible downside of this is that you need a GM who thinks on his feet, and preferably players that do the same. You’ll also, of course, need players who are comfortable with knowing that they can’t maximize all their tactical advantages by memorizing the core rules.

    Simple Combat System: See above. Once you have the mechanics down, most attacks boil down to looking at one stat (or two, if your opponent is putting up an active defense), applying any situational modifiers (which are mostly made up on the spot – the book provides examples, but not an exhaustive list), and rolling the dice once (possibly twice). As I said earlier, there are situations in which you can “flip” your roll, but few enough that it’s easy to remember when you can do this. Sometimes you get a reroll, but not often.

    On top of all this, UA has one of the most interesting settings I’ve ever encountered. It’s a sort of postmodern urban fantasy, where “postmodern” generally means “weird.” Characters who don’t use magic really only need the first section of the book, and the game will be more fun if their players don’t read any further than that. Even if the players read the whole book, there are still plenty of mysteries for the GM to play with.

    Well, that was a pretty exhaustive review for a comment. Point is, I love this system, and it’s definitely worth checking out. The core book is $40 on Amazon, but it’s worth it, especially considering that the core book and a couple of dice are really all you need to play. Seriously – unless you’re playing a specific type of campaign, you really don’t need the supplements for anything.

    Oh, and the magic system is awesome.

  46. Duffy says:

    Sounds to me like you guys need to give Tri-Stat a try. Pretty simple character creation and rolling, but an incredibly high level of customization is available through, get this, role playing.

    It’s a little hard to explain, so just find a copy of the rulebook and look it over, but the basic idea here is that 2 characters could have the same exact stats and abilities, but be entirely different in both combat, ability, and role playing.

    It also facilitates a wide range of game types/settings which can be combined in the same game. You want mechs, superheroes, jedi, modern, and fantasy characters balanced side by side? Done.

    Take a look, at the very least you should be intrigued.

  47. Timo says:

    I know it isn’t a gaming system, but I’m reading Olympos by Dan Simmons at the moment. The setting is a bit strange, since there seem to be to earths, one “modern” (a few centuries from now) earth and one “old” (Trojan war, with gods and all) earth. There are old-style humans, a certain, dumb breed of humans, kept as a “herd” by the post-humans, which are nano-enhanced humans. Then there are some vague (probably something to do with me not reading the first part) entities which play around at being gods everywhere they go. And then there are the ‘Vecs, a sort of servants of the post-humans (bit unclear, probably got something to do with me not reading the first part), which are basically cyborgs, designed to study humans, but all with different abilities, some are good at mining in extreme circumstances while others are better at mechanical stuff. So if you want to create a new (modern/old, mechanical, nano-enhanced, ancient gods (actually enhanced humans) and a whole mytholegy) setting, this might give you some inspiration!

  48. ChattyDm says:

    Shamus have you perused the new Star Wars Saga game from WotC (The coffee table book)?

    They rebalanced the classes and now all archetypes do cool things… And it’s pre-D&D 4e!

    :)

  49. Hermes says:

    Hello.
    An elegant system with quickquickfast resolution and good detail is the ORE system. There are various permutations of it, Nemesis(Free), StarORE(free) Godlike, Reign(free supplements regularly), WildTalents.

    The ORE system itself is easily used for any setting.

    Otherwise i’d recommend the rules in NWOD as quick and easy to learn, the setting itself can be ignored(i’m sure you’ve got a few whitewolf haters in your group ;) )

    Setting wise i’d recommend Fading Suns(although the rules arent anything to be excited about)

    For something completely different I recommend Amber(in my experience a great game if you have many players if not the best) or Polaris(4 players only though, no less no more).

    I’d stay away from anything with percentiles or with multiple sets of rules(one for combat one, one for ship to ship combat, one for magic, one for psychic powers, one for everything else etc. )

    If you end up playing D&D anyways try the birthright setting.

  50. Mark says:

    Shamus, I’m not a terribly experienced player with these, so I can’t comment on systems, but as for settings: why not pick the kind of setting that none of you have tried?

  51. Shamus says:

    ChattyDM: I have the Star Wars book pictured here:

    http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=819

    It’s also image #2 in the montage above.

  52. BChoinski says:

    Nephele, if you even find it, yo can go high-tech with “Ringworld”, which used the Chaosium system.

  53. ChattyDm says:

    Just so we’re clear on this, I’m talking about (yet) another version of the game. :)

    This one:
    http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/rpgsagaed

    Which features a lot of upgrade from the one you have and is supposedly better balanced between classes. I heard/read a lot of good things about it.

  54. Taellosse says:

    I’m going to have to put in my vote for GURPS, too. It’s the one I use with my own group, and it really is the most adaptable I’ve run across. Since it’s designed to be generic, you can play it in any setting you like, homebrew or not, and ignore those rules that aren’t relevant for you. Combat can be as crunchy or fluid as you want, really, depending on how granular you want to get–GURPS Lite is pretty minimalistic, but still functional, and there is about a books-worth of combat rules spread over various volumes if you want to get detailed.

    As far as setting–that’s harder, and I don’t feel qualified to give advice other than to say that other’s suggestions about having people vote for their top three and picking the one with the most aggregated points seems reasonable.

  55. Bogan the Mighty says:

    Lynx: Dark Heresy has been one of the ones I’ve started to lean toward to try and convince everyone to play if we couldn’t get the Star Wars thing off the ground. Of course I am also intrigued by the idea that we might want to attempt to role play out of an encounter rather then charge forward with bolters ablaze since you never know when all of a sudden your arm gets shredded off with one of those spiffy chainsaw swords that I see get used.

  56. Marurun says:

    I recommend Action System, by Gold Rush Games. It’s clearly derived from Fuzion, which itself it awesome. By default the combat rules are somewhat tactical, somewhere between D20 and GURPS, but you can easily chuck a lot of the specialized stuff.

    One nice thing is that you can download Action System for free. In fact, you can download basic Fuzion for free, too! They are HIGHLY compatible and easy to change should you need to. Plus, you can play them Interlock-style (d10), Fuzion/Action style (2d6), or just make up your own style (2d8, for example). I seriously recommend looking into it. If you need any ideas or links to resources I’d be happy to post them for anyone here.

  57. food4worms says:

    I’m a slavering fanboi for Spirit of the Century. The cool part is that the rules are available as a SRD:

    http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html

    So, barrier to entry is just the time to read it.

    But, my vote aside. The thing you might consider in deciding on a setting is to play a mini game to come up with the setting. There’s a couple of cool examples of this out there:

    – Leo Balsera’s talk about the Fate fractal on Master Plan
    http://masterplan.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=255930

    – Bill Burdock`s Universalis + Fate + PDQ mash up
    http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25334.0

    – Zero Sum Fate
    http://www.phreeow.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Zero+Sum+FATE

    – Lexicon RPG
    http://www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html

    – and my (humble) untested attempt at setting creation which I intend to try out in a couple of weeks
    http://lunch4worms.blogspot.com/2007/12/setting-game-rules.html

  58. Robert says:

    Personally, I’d give GURPS a miss. Way too complicated for people who aren’t certain they want to play a new campaign. (And I say this as someone who’s written two GURPS books and almost 100 GURPS Traveller articles.)

    My favourite system is currently BESM (2nd edition). The new 3rd edition (Tri-Stat) is nice, but it presents so many options that the GM needs to do a major pruning job first. (Which is encouraged by the authors, BTW. Just make certain your players know which rules and options will actually be used and you should be fine.)

    Why do I like it? Play is fast, and the rules are consistent. You have two dice to give a bit of a bell curve (I agree with you there). Character creation is point-based with an encouragement to story-telling, but loose enough that it doesn’t take very long. (Unlike GURPS, where min-maxing a character can take a couple of hours, especially for beginners.)

    I’ll be using BESM for my next Traveller game, at least for the play-time rules. (I’ll use GURPS Traveller for background details like worldbuilding, where the extra detail doesn’t slow the game down.)

    I’d also recommend Thousand Suns, based on pre-publication sneak-peaks. No idea when the release date will be, though.

  59. Retlor says:

    With regards to Star Wars. I think a mixed party can be done right, as long as you take care with it. For one thing, if a Jedi character is the only Jedi in the party, then they tend to become the party leader by default. They also tend to make the decisions, and will veto anything they don’t like, which means anything the player doesn’t like. Plus, a lot of their more basic force powers do not allow a defence check, so the Jedi character can throw another character across the room if he doesn’t like them. This happens frequently, and there usually isn’t a damn thing the other player can do back unless he wants to get into actual serious PvPing.

    This makes it incredibly important that the person playing a Jedi understands that the game doesn’t revolve around him. Case in point. In our current campaign, we’d just got done killing a squad of Reborn (stormtroopers who have been dunked in force-heavy areas until they acquire limited force-powers). Naturally, my scoundrel and the Scout/Scoundrel character, wanted a go with those fancy glowy swords that everyone was swinging around. So we both pocket one. The Jedi comes back into the room and says ‘I collect up the lightsabers.’ The GM tells him that two are missing. He force slams our characters to the ground until we give them up.

    Now, I’m not saying that we should be given lightsabers, or that we deserved them as ‘spoils of war.’ It was in character for us to take them, seeing as both of us our characters are in this for money at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that we should be allowed lightsabers. However, what I am saying is that a Jedi characters generally gets what he wants and, depending on the player, will attack to get it.

    I think a mixed group in SW can work, I really do, if the Jedi player is mature enough to understand that he isn’t the centre of the game, and his word is not law. By setting himself up as the leader in that fashion, he makes the game double-plus-unfun for the rest of the group.

    So yeah, there’s my very ranty two cents on the Star Wars RPG.

  60. -Chipper says:

    OK, this probably won’t be helpful, but I’m wondering if it would be possible/helpful to apply game theory to your gaming dilemma. This is interesting because one of Shamus’ definitions of the group ‘winning’ includes no one player ‘loses’ which is why this becomes such a complex problem. One obvious way to chose is one of the players saying, “I am going to GM for and I’d be happy if you all join me,” but that may result in a breaking of the fellowship (so to speak) which is not deemed to be an optimal solution. Maybe a long-term plan where the first game is one that appeals to the most possible, but with a promise that the next be one that appeals more to those that have the least attraction to the first game. The more I think about it, this sort of problem solving should really appeal to your group- maybe a good way to solve it is to solve it in-character. (i.e. Instead of Shamus and his group discussing it, Shamus’ monk discusses it with Joe’s fighter, Tom’s mage, and John’s Jedi.) Make a game out of choosing your next game.

    Oooo! Have a Mechwarrior tournament where the winner decides the next game! And sell tickets. And post sessions on YouTube… OK, sorry. Now I’m being silly.

  61. Casper says:

    My suggestion on the Jedi problem:
    First, does the player wants to play a Jedi Paladin or something? Or only a dude with cool Force abilities? If it is the second, it can be arranged. If the game is set after the old trilogy, there are only few real Jedi. The PC can be someone with Force abilities, but without formal training. Give the PC some abilities, but nothing too overpowered. He can come from any background- and how he uses his powers is his own choice. At higher levels he can become a stronger Force user, even a trained Jedi, but by that time other PC will be quite powerful and influential as well- and it will be just the right time for those Epic Quests.

  62. Bogan the Mighty says:

    Retlor: You see that is where the problem with Shamus’s group lies. The one guy that wants to be the Jedi is the same one that wants the uber powerful character and has been wanting pvp lately. I think he is the only one of us that wants to be a jedi so there wouldn’t be a proper jedi to try and balance things. What you described will more then likely happen at least once with our group. I know cause I wanted to be one of the shady/sneaky types that would gather up lightsabers for the black market.

  63. Tommi says:

    I’d go with the Shadow of Yesterday. It pretty much fits all your requirements, if fudge dice count as fancy enough.

    It is somewhat dirty hippy indie game, but not too much to be impossible to understand. It also assumes that players will min-max to the best of their ability and works better the more they go after experience.

    The best part is that it is available for free as a wiki: http://tsoy.crngames.com/index.php?title=Main_Page.

    Lots of helpful stuff, a Shadowrun conversion, and links for buying the book can be found on the homepage: http://crngames.com/the_shadow_of_yesterday/index

  64. I would suggest Alternity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternity , as a decent, and highly under-rated, customizable Sci-Fi setting. You can play their available races, or make your own. You can use any setting that you like from any tech level. You can do X-Files meets CyberPunk meets Space Opera meets SteamPunk meets SuperHeroes meets Captain Caveman meets Star Trek meets Star Wars meets Farscape meets Firefly meets Wild Wild West meets Cthulhu….
    Here is a place that may have some decent downloadables (haven’t had a chance to check them out yet, but it can’t hurt) if you want an idea of the game, http://alternityrpg.net/downloads.php

  65. Lorgath says:

    My first post on your site, I believe Mr. Young. It’s a pleasant read, and often makes some points that I’d agree with.

    I’d concur with everyone else who has thus far suggested Savage Worlds. It seems to be a rather fun system, a mixture of some of the better features from a lot of different systems. I’m currently taking a break from playing in and running rediculous amounts of Shadowrun and I’m writing a campaign based in Vietnam. It should be great fun – we’ll be watching a ‘nam film before most sessions and I’ll be trying to use period music too… Mmm, Hendrix, Helicopters and something that alliterates with the other two words. Um. Helibores?

  66. wumpus says:

    For completeness:

    1) You don’t want to use Champions or any other HERO system setting. It’s only d6’s, and is very character design and combat oriented. (Which is why I loved it.)

    2) GURPS is more generic, and less complicated – I like it too, so I’m going to have to guess that it’s a bad choice for you? (Though you can try neat things like having everyone write themselves up and then apply ‘mutations’ or power pools to themselves [Or better yet – apply them in secret and let people try to figure out their powers!] and then drop them into the Matrix or a Rift or just make them ‘Heroes’ like the show or what have you…)

    3) You might want to do one run of Paranoia in between campaigns, just for fun…

    Alex

  67. Justin says:

    I know Rifts gets ALOT of flak, but I’m still a fan of if. My gaming group has successfully had fun with it for years, despite being over the age of 16.

    Incidentally, I recommend Deadlands. The civil war + zombies = awesome!

  68. wumpus says:

    Bogan: Re the Jedi dilemma – just make your Jedi wannabe the ‘padawan’ learner for the NPC Jedi mentor. Heh.

  69. Kotenku says:

    For Setting, Firefly Universe might be fun.

  70. Retlor says:

    Wumpus: That’s a good idea to an extent. Problem is, in Saga edition, a Padawan is basically defined to be a Jedi below seventh level. After that, they can build their own lightsaber and are assumed to be full-fledged Jedi.

    So it would work in the short-term, especially if you’re playing a low level campaign, but once the power levels are high enough, the Jedi would be able to ignore what his teacher said without any problems.

  71. Hermes says:

    If you want to dip into a different story without struggling with loads of new rules, go with d20 modern/future. You can have any sort of (or cross-) genre campaign. It worked well for our mixed-experience group.

  72. adam says:

    To suggest my favorite system, In Nomine. Its a game where you play angels or demons, in their respective roles. It uses very simple rules, and a character sheet could probably easily fit on an index card. The rolls are 2d6 for pass/fail, and a different d6 called the drama die, which determines the level of success/failure. The different choirs angels and bands of demons (basically a race) each has a different focus, from an angel that always know the fastest way to anywhere, to a demon that destroys things through sheer force of will.

  73. khorboth says:

    Ok, I guess I’ll throw in my 2 cents on the systems.

    Amber Diceless Roleplaying: Should meet all your requirements except the fun dice. Super simple rules. Really cool system. Super-powerful char’s. Awesome setting.
    Note: If you haven’t read the novels, ignore this option. Then go read the novels.

    Wraith: Again lacking the fun dice. But the psudo-PvP stuff built in is something even hard-core roleplayers can really get into.

  74. Cadrys says:

    I’m going to second Calle (edit: and khorboth), above with a shout-out for the Amber Diceless RPG. It will actually cover most of the group’s preferences:

    (1) Infinite Shadows, every player can create a custom ‘homeground’. Different genre this week? Not a problem.
    (2) Epic. Uhm, Princes(ses) of Reality? Yeah, that’s pretty epic. Amassing power? Uh huh.
    (3) Interesting characters in a compelling setting? Big yes.
    (4) The PvP guy? Character creation starts with bidding for stats…against the other players. Sowing party discord? “And so we came to the keep of Ganelon, whom I trusted like a brother. Which is to say, not at all.” Yep.

    Downsides: Everybody needs to be good roleplayers. The GM/Storyteller has to be REALLY good, since he gets to make up battles without any dice to push him along. There usually ends up being party splits where one or two people are doing something neat, and the rest are waiting for the “camera” to swing back to them.

    Pre-emptive note: Those who haven’t read the books can easily have characters who were, until recently, even aware of their heritage. “You always knew you were different…”

  75. Alan De Smet says:

    I’ve got a Spirit of the Century crush as well. The system is simple and elegant and allows you to capture pulp gaming with a wide variety of weirdness. It’s got a great bell curve. The system generates a bell curve. Even better, a character will end up with a result matching their skill level or better about 60% of the time. So if you have a character with Superb Piloting, you know he’ll usually make a Superb Piloting check.

    I’m so in love with the system’s flexibility that I’m planning on using it for a BPRD/Hellboy game I’m working on. The Aspect system lets just about anything become a meaninful stat and signal for what the player wants to focus on. I think it will work well for games with wildly different power levels (Hellboy the demon versus Liz the firestarter versus Kate the professor) while letting everyone still be cool. The ability to place temporary Aspects on other people lets you come up with interesting maneuvers (be they social or combat) and have the game reward you. Aspect based ramifications for social or physical wounds is more interesting than “you’re wounded” or ‘you’re dead.”

    SotC‘s strength seem to me to be fast and loose play, mixed power levels, and strong signaling from the players for what they want in the game. As a simulation it’s not so good.

    The SRD for SotC is plenty good enough to play with, but the actual book has a bunch of advice for running a pulp game that isn’t in the SRD.

  76. Nilus says:

    Justin.

    My issue with Rifts is that the rule system is just so old and outdated and every book seems to add a rule or option that contradicts the book before. That and the fact that every time a new book came out, every character class, weapon and power armor in it was 10 times better then in the book before.
    And mega damage makes no sense

    I do agree with you about Deadlands. I would recommend the Savage world version over classic but they are both fun systems. I also would recommend Deadlands sister game Hell on Earth. I never thought I would have so much fun playing a kitchen sink post apocalyptic Horror Western but it really is a lot of fun.

  77. Vegedus says:

    Man, all of that sounded very similar. I’ve never really liked DnD and it’s billions of rules and tactics > roleplay, but have never played anything. I dunno if my group want to play something else, but I’m going to ask them at some point. Trouble is, in the backwater place I live, I’ve never seen a rulebook for a game that wasn’t DnD. It’s come to the point where I’m thinking of making my own rulesystem. It would be something incredibly simple and vague, where people would roll a die and add modifiers depending on a written character sheet, devoid of stats.

    I dunno if that’s too bold a plan, though.

    Another seemingly unique thing about my situation would be that I have no qualms about creating my own setting from scratch. I need a good rulebook with good rules, not a list of monsters, gods, and cultural nuances.

  78. Poet says:

    For a group that different, hit up World of Darkness, but don’t limit yourself to one specific sect within it. Our group (7 players at the moment, as many as 10 in the past, and as few as 5 depending on schedules) go through every different possibility within the setting. I’m fond of Mage, myself, we’ve got Vampires, Werewolves (and other skin-changers), Prometheans, even a normal human (we bribed him into taking the Sleepwalker trait from Mage so we wouldn’t be raped by Paradox every time we got into combat).
    Our Werewolves enjoy rough and tumble combat, our Vamps are collectors of m4d l00ts. Our human is actually useful for subtle work, and Mages are…
    Well, we’re nuts. But Path dictates purpose. Using the same characters (more or less), we’ve been through everything form murder mysteries, to a bit of Indiana Jones relic hunting, to preventing a war between the three big swinger races, to meeting ourselves from a parallel universe.
    The Storyteller actually photoshopped my character picture to add a goatee for that. Hi-larious.
    Go World of Darkness. You will have NO regrets.

  79. Tom Gunn says:

    I’m going to put in a shout out for one of my favorite systems Champions/Hero system. My main RPG group has been using it on and off for a large variety of settings for 20 years. In may ways it is similar to GURPS and has similar advantages and disadvantages. It lacks the use of many different dice, lots of d6s with 3d6 being the universal skill/attack roll +/- modifiers. I happen to think the core rule set is more integrated than GURPS but that is an opinion. On the other hand GURPS has tons more additional source material available, which if you are doing your own world does not matter as much. The other down side is complexity. It takes a bit of experience with the system to make a character just right on the first go… but that is fixable with character experience which goes straight into build points. It gives the numbers/tactical guys plenty to play with. We as a group tend to be more role playing/character development orientated and all know the rules well enough that the complexity is not an issue. It does take a bit more to learn the system but has a lot of depth once you do.

  80. Kilmor says:

    Unfortunately I can’t read through all the comments already added but, I greatly enjoyed playing Nobilis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobilis). Its diceless, highly social/RP oriented, and being creative is highly valuable in play. Very very rules-lite, practically no math at all. Check out the wiki entry , you might like it! :)

  81. Noumenon says:

    Shamus, what level did your characters get up to by the time they were ready to save the world?

  82. Evil Otto says:

    “The problem is, the rest of us all want something different. Star Wars. Pirates. Cyberpunk. Superheroes. The giant robot stuff. Vampires. Werewolves.”

    I had the same problem… everyone in my group wanted to play something different. So we played a game where everyone got to play whatever they wanted, within limits: Torg.

    In the five years (off and on) I ran it, my group had:

    A futuristic alien soldier with bioweapons
    A 1930s pulp-era gadget-wielding superspy
    A sorceress
    A powered-armor superhero
    A cybernun
    A werewolf
    An elfin shapechanger
    A ninja

    And…

    One ordinary guy from Earth.

    The system is an odd logarithmic one, using only a single d20 but with so many modification from “possibilities” (hero points) and cards that the chaos factor is reduced. The cards add a lot to the role-playing, rewarding players who get into character. The game encourages player cooperation like no other one I’ve ever seen. It really comes across as cinematic.

    The downside:
    1) The metaplot is thick. REALLY thick. I ended up ignoring it as the publisher’s story got more and more bogged down with bizarre twists and alternate realities.
    2) Several of the systems are clunky, especially the magic system. The psionics system is one of the worst I’ve seen in any game, ever.
    3) It’s long out of print.

  83. Cronus says:

    I’ve had some fun with 7th Sea, with it focusing on “swashbuckling” and using a bit of our world “history” to play around with. My gaming group also had some fun with the Drama Dice that you get as well. It can make for a light-hearted, enjoyable session.

    7th Sea

  84. BlackJaw says:

    As Shamus has pointed out in a few responses, the trouble with Jedi in Starwars isn’t just a power balance thing (which it is less of in Saga rules, and NO Shamus, the book you have is not the Saga rules. Saga rules are newer and have a number of enhancements that were essentially 4ed D&D test runs,)… ahem… the troulbe with Jedi is story based. Jedi and big movers and power players in most the Starwars setting, and it sounds like Shamus would rather run something less epic with smugglers and Hutss, etc. This is nice, and rather playable, but that feels a lot like the slow local hero to planet saving epic hero build of a D&D game… and well StarWars is supposed to be Space Opera Epic… with slaughtering dozens of Storm Troopers and what not. You can run games that are out of the way local type things, but you have to admit it’s just set near StarWars instead of being StarWars. That said, you should still need to keep the hell away from the StarWars cannon worlds and story.

    A friend of mine actually did this, including smuggling and other troublesome to jedi topics, and including a power-loving player with a Jedi character.

    He set the game at around the time of Episode 3 (closer to the Clone Wars animated series really), with the war taking place. The players were attached, story wise, to a small fleet of Clone troopers in the ass end of the galaxy (read as planets not seen in any of the films). The Jedi in the group was low ranking, with a jedi general leading the fleet and giving him missions. The rest of the group were either specialists of the fleet, representatives of local power players (ambassadors from one of the local planets), or local guides/etc.
    Story wise, the local droid army took out the long distance communication satellite, leaving the small fleet on their own. After a year of game play, the team retook the communication satellite and got it running again, just in time for the Clone order to eliminate all Jedi to come through… which forced the Jedi character into hiding.

    So story wise, the jedi character started out having to obey the local jedi general. Then the local jedi general was wiped out by his own clone forces and the jedi was forced into having to hide his Jedi status.

    Overall, the group got to play a lot more smuggling and what not with a jedi in hiding.

    My advice: If you want to Run starwars, do so with the Saga rules (yes it’s a new rule book), and do so in the 4-5-6th time period so you can simply say “No Jedi.” If the guy who wants to play an uberpowerful semi-pvp jedi doesn’t like it, well then he doesn’t have to play. Otherwise I’m sure he’d make a lovely Wookie soldier, or some other monstrous combo.

    Anyway, a few other options… I rather like the Mutants & Masterminds 2ed rules for superheroes. But it’s 20 sided dice only.
    d20 Modern / Future is a nifty little take on D&D rules, and it again, was an early attempt at 4ed revisions.
    Some people on this board are pushing the dead Alternity System. I own(ed) most of it, and I will agree they had a great StarDrive and even better DarkMatter setting, but the rules weren’t all that clean or playable. They did have lots of dice.

  85. David V.S. says:

    I second using Paranoia as an “in between” system. It’s hard to play more than one or two adventures with that system, but it’s a riot to play those one or two!

    Then you’ll have more time to figure out what you are really doing next…

  86. Ryan says:

    I second World of Darkness. It is an easy system with less dice rolling so the players can focus on Roleplaying and the Story. It’s only drawback is that it uses only one die, the d10. I have played the game before and character creation took like 20 minutes. I picked up on the rules in less than a few minutes and began to roleplay better than I have in DnD. I still prefer DnD over the World of Darkness, but if you really want to focus on story and roleplaying, World of Darkness is for you.

  87. Shamus says:

    Noumenon: Level 8 and 9, mostly.

  88. Shamus says:

    BlackJaw: You are right, SW is space opera. It’s not Serinity. I actually LIKE the space opera stuff, I’d just prefer to start small and work up. It’s tough to get excited about the 100th time you see a Star Destroyer. You won’t be awed when you meet a Jedi if you’ve got one in your group. If your story begins with all the most important people from all the most amazing places, then there is little in the way of spectacle left in the galaxy. If you start at the top, you can only go downhill, as it were.

    I’d prefer to start on the edge of space and work inward, with the players slowly being drawn into larger conflicts and meeting more important people as they go.

  89. Adam says:

    I’m gonna put a word in on Scion: Hero from White-wolf.

    The premise is that you play sons and daughters of acient gods. The Noris, Egyptian, Aztec, Greek, Voodoo and Japanese pantheons are represented in the first book. If you like the old legends and myths then it is good. The setting is modern time and you can have wildly diffent game styles from combat to role play.

    The combat take some reading but after 2-3 session you’ll have it down pat. It is very fast paced, and unlike other Whitewolf game there are no opposed rolles, you either damage or don’t.

    As you progress you enter Demigod, then God. The story and background in each book has been outstanding.

    Now after all this I’ll tell you that I am not a White-wolf table top fan. I do not like the way their system works, but they hit it here. You can have Mighty warriors, a sleak suductriss or a mad scientist.

    The game is fun and if you are running the session is is also fun to add in elements of myths and see if they catch on.

  90. Bogan the Mighty says:

    Oh and I don’t know if I’ve said it before or not when we trying to figure it out Shamus, so I will now. I don’t think I’d like World of Darkness. I don’t know about the other ones, but the Vampire stuff just seems to give off a vibe that I don’t particularly care for.

  91. Matt says:

    I can’t believe that no-one has mentioned Traveller :<

  92. sithson says:

    Sigh again, i will never understand why people want to have a bell curve, but then complain about using more than one die!!!! It really makes me mad becuase you can never have one with out the other!!!! WHY CANT PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT???

    Until now.

    Yes, there is a solution, dear reader.

    You like bell curves. Yet you are thusly lazy to roll more than one die. What do you do?

    Easy. You will need the following: A D20, Some paint, filler material, such as green stuff, or a file.

    Step 1: Fill in your D20 numbers, with green stuff (They are typicaly indented into the d20, alternativly you can file off the numbers. The trick here is to have a blank D20 with no prinitng on any sides. Use paint to cover the d20.

    Taking a marker, or paint, cover the D20 in a curved spread of numbers, as such:

    1,2,4,6,7,8,8,10,10,10,10,10,10,12,12,13,14,16,18,20

    Spray over new painted numbers with clear cote protector, or use nail polish with very thin coats (and like 8-10) applications.

    You now have a bell curve single rolling d20. Enjoy.
    How it works: You remove numbers and place more numbers of the same kind, increasing the odds that the number will land on that number) I know I know… im super smart. Thank you.

  93. sithson says:

    Oh: And for people who are to anal to not have a all the numbers from 1-20 use a d30 die instead, making sure you give the middle number (10) lots of chances to roll on:

    1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,8,9,9,9,10,10,10,10,10,11,11,11,12,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20

    :P

  94. Henebry says:

    I played Call of Cthulhu with some old friends last summer and (speaking as someone who had focused for the past 3 1/2 years on D&D 3.5) I was absolutely amazed by the CoC game system. Whereas D&D focuses on character customization (with inevitable headaches for the GM, who can’t possibly keep up with all the supplementary rulebooks, new character classes, new spells, new feats, etc., many of them hopelessly broken from day one), the old Chaosium ruleset for Call of Cthulhu focuses on atmosphere and gameplay, with quick resolution of combat.

    My favorite thing about the CoC system? In D&D combat, a player and DM need to collaborate to figure out whether the character has scored a hit. And, to make matters worse, every roll comes with modifiers, modifiers that vary according to the particulars of the situation. Here’s a typical exchange:

    Player: “Rolled an 18.”

    GM: “Was that your die roll, or have you added your to-hit bonuses?”

    Player: “Oh, well, with the bonuses, it comes to 23.”

    GM: “OK, let me check the AC of the werewolf. Um, yeah, that hits.”

    Player: “OK, rolled 4 for damage.”

    GM: “Does that include your damage bonus? Yes? Well, with a 4 damage you’re not getting past its damage reduction.”

    You get the idea. To score a hit in C of C, you simply need to roll under your skill level with that weapon. This means a player knows whether he’s scored a hit, without having to consult with the GM. So the exchange becomes:

    Player: “I roll a 53 and hit. Damage 4.”

    GM: “You connect, but the wolf appears unharmed. You remember something your grandfather used to say about the wolf-men of this forest.”

    As you can see, streamlining the combat system shifts attention away from the mechanics of combat to the atmosphere of the battle. Players do give up the power to customize their characters by choosing unusual prestige classes, but I think that actually opens up space for them to customize their characters by giving them real personalities.

    In any event, I was inspired to create a high-fantasy game using the Call of Cthulhu game mechanic””at least what I knew of that mechanic from having played the game. You can see the results at the website linked above. I’m particularly proud of the grapple system (which represents a vast improvement on both D&D 3.5 and CoC, insofar as it applies to grappling rules which closely parallel the standard CoC rules, rather than being a confusing exception to standard combat). And I’m proud of the magic system, which asks players to think hard about the origin of their magic, rather than just the in-game effect.

    In terms of playability, another advantage is that this system makes no claim to being “complete.” It is, after all, the work of an amateur. So if, during play, some strange situation opens up (how much strength to break down the door sealing off the subterranean lake? how long can the characters hold their breath? what if he doesn’t fight but just floats passively?) I don’t feel the urge to riffle through the rulebooks looking for the official rule, but can simply apply some common-sense judgement.

    I GM these days for my son and some of his friends, who range in age from 10-12. After a successful game of CoC-style fantasy play, they voted to change settings to Star Wars. So lately I’ve been reworking the system, altering the magic system to the Force. And it’s not a bad fit: where CoC tracks each character’s sanity (lost piecemeal whenever investigators encounter the nameless creatures of the void), my Star Wars system tracks each character’s Jedi discipline, building in the temptation of the Dark Side for force-sensitive characters.

  95. Retlor says:

    Shamus and Bogan: Have you thought about WoD mortals? It’s my favourite system, and I would say it’s also my favourite setting, but the setting is basically Earth, with whatever supernatural elements you want added in.

    Indeed, it would be quite possible to run a Mortals game where there are NO supernatural elements whatsoever, whatever floats your boat. You could disregard vampires, werewolfs and mages completely, and take them out of the setting completely. Not only so you don’t know about them, but so they DON’T exist.

    Furthermore, it really allows you to create characters that tie into a setting, and for whom the power level can be easily adjusted for whatever play style you desire. Combat is quick, narrative and flexible. It is one roll only and the success of that roll is your damage.

    All in all I think you could tailor it to whatever style of game you wanted. Dark modern fantasy? Fine. Gritty realism? Fine. Supernatural horror? Fine. Anything you want really, so you don’t need to worry about finding a system that fits your theme, you can adjust it as you want.

    Of course, I’m a rabid WoD fanboy, so my opinion on it should be dialled down a little bit if you want an accurate view.

  96. wagemage says:

    I would also recommend the Serenity roleplaying game. I believe the same system has also been used for the Battlestar Galactica game.

    One thing to be aware of is that it’s a “fixer-upper”: some rules need work, and there’s plenty that’s not clearly defined. With D&D, if you wait around generally someone publishes errata, publishes FAQ’s, and so forth. Official support from the publisher has been fairly minimal, so you need to look at fan sites and your own conscience for guidance.

  97. I’d recommend giving Savage Worlds or Deadlands a try. (Not d20 Deadlands. The old one.)

    Deadlands is a sort of a cross between Call of Cthulhu and a spaghetti western (the back of the book calls it “a spaghetti western . . . with meat!) It has enough elements of a variety of different genres to satisfy pretty much any player out there. You use every single type of die AND cards for combat, BUT it’s also VERY SIMPLE and easy to grasp. There’s virtually no math involved, for one thing, you roll against a flat target number. Initiative is handled via cards, actions are handled via dice.

    Savage Worlds is similar (it grew out of the Deadlands system) but it’s a bit more simple/streamlined and more generic, meaning you can play any genre that suits your fancy. It also has the best Mass Combat system for an RPG I’ve ever seen, BAR NONE.

  98. Chris Arndt says:

    I feel unqualified.

    I only posted to test whether this gravatar finally works; it does and now I don’t know what to do.

  99. Mattius Caesar says:

    Shadowrun.

    Its kinda funny, if you don’t know much about shadowrun you’d probably tend to look at like a White Wolf game played with d6’s, but its much less limiting. It would be difficult to write a sufficient explaination, but I have to say as a guy who:

    -Enjoys Roleplaying
    -Enjoys fast-paced combat
    -Enjoys a world of possibility (both for chargen and actions)
    -Enjoys having a published setting to fall back on
    -Enjoys planning out attacks and strategies
    -Enjoys establishing a reputation that has consequences within the setting

    I really enjoy Shadowrun.

    Of course, you run the games at your house? Shadowrun can get quite vulgar if you let it.

  100. Rich says:

    Shamus,

    If the strategy guy feels out of sorts about the “Fast Furious Fun” Savage Worlds, you might try Pirates of the Spanish Main. Same publisher, same ruleset, seaborne chases are handled with counters and a ruler whenever they may crop up, but the focus is still very much RP-oriented. There’s supposedly a nice big backstory (which is what draws most of the mechwarrior fans anyways), but none of it’s been released yet so there’s still plenty of space to overlay your own version of things. Added bonus, the publisher’s put out the books in PDF format at their affiliated store-site.

  101. guy says:

    I like a system called multiverser. it creates characters based off the players and sends them through a bunch of alternate diminsions. my character is currently stuck in ~18 century Europe ruled by chimps, after leaving a diminsion full of quantum cardboard boxes in which i was attacked by Hastur, animate poptart filling, some sort of explosive thingy, a zombie, and some reptile thingy. i only escaped that last fight by use of an unbomb. no bell curve, but a wide range of resualts, and a mechanic of sorts to deal with the players leaving the planned path. roll 3d10, and consult a chart to determine how good or bad the result is. a good result got me a blowtorch, a bad result summoned hauster. no chance of a TPK, because characters move to the next dimension on death.

    one setring suggestion for DnD: DragonMech. it has dragons and steampunk mechs. if you don’t want to use the mechs, it still has a nice setting.

  102. Davesnot says:

    I’ve always wanted a group that would play Amber.. I don’t think Shamus’ group sounds like an Amber group.. There was an old game.. Theatrix.. that was diceless that I always wanted to get people into..

    Shamus.. the Jedi problem.. you say a player “stands out”.. meaning his style is different than the groups’.. maybe make him a GM’s helper that actually plays a character on your side.. he gets to oppose the PCs.. gets limited knowlege so he can run his character.. but doesn’t get to know the whole plan.. heck.. have the PCs be normal folks fighting the Empire in their way.. and have the Jedi guy be on your side pop in .. and/or have his nuking the shopkeeper bring attention to the community and have the Empire toast lots of innocents.. and maybe tip him towards the dark side… any the PCs can try to stop his slide.. (him still being GM helper so he doesn’t totally whack the plot)..

    Just a thought…

  103. NobleBear says:

    I chip in my two cents for GURPS. I love the character creation process and the ability to go on any sort of adventure.

    Whatever you decide, Shamus, please let us know and why. :D

  104. Davesnot says:

    James Bond… the old Victory Games system with d10s.. very fun.. fast.. fair.. strategy friendly.. the PCs (agents) tend to succeed in anything they’re trained in… but by how much is where their problems arise.. .. and your Jedi can Be a “00” agent.. but you’d have to find the old system.. I have an extra book I could loan you… if ya promise to send it back in a few years.

  105. GAZZA says:

    The thing about GURPS is that it hardly fits the “easy to learn rules” requirement. I grant you that the basic mechanic is easy enough (3d6, compare to target) but that’s true of D&D as well; the devil is in the details, and GURPS has some of the most intricate combat details you’re likely to find in a “modern” game, many of which are tricky to just avoid.

    Instead I’d recommend the Hero system. It does mean that you’re only rolling d6s (but that’s true also of GURPS); however, Hero’s complexity is all “front loaded” in the character generation system (and that’s really only for superheroes; if you play something like Star Hero then the players really only have to concentrate on skills, characteristics, and equipment). Or there’s Basic Roleplaying, which I believe has been recently open sourced; has all the fancy dice, but a percentile system instead of bell curve.

    Mind you, if I were in the situation of literally not knowing what system to try next, then I think my main criteria would be “something I’ve never played before”. Lots of free or nearly free indie RPGs out there; I reckon I’d give one of them a bash.

  106. Wow, Mr. Young. You’re comment section, it’s begun to expand into The Crimea!

    Again!

    Anyway, based on your criteria, I’d have to say: Warhammer 40K Dark Heresy would probably not be a good choice. Or Warhammer FRP either. It lacks fun dice, as it’s pretty much all d10’s. I’m also pretty sure you’re not keen on an overly complex simulationist combat system that tracks hit locations. I dare say, you could be bored to tears by it. Also, it might be rather hard to find.

    Scion, by White Wolf, is probably more complex than their World of Darkness line. It uses what’s roughly the same variant of the Storytelling system as Exalted. Again, boring dice–all d10’s–and it’s rules and powers are geared very much towards what’s basically modern, not-anime Exalted. Cinematic, high action and power. Even starting characters are expressly superhuman, though unlike d20-based games, “superhuman” is relative to ordinary humans who wouldn’t likely survive a single bullet–as opposed to “humans” with more HP than dollars in their wallet and can conceivably make a Fort Save vs. enough cyanide to kill three elephants. But, like all White Wolf games, when you take away the writing and design decisions to emphasize roleplay over crunchiness, the system itself uses its relative simplicity to hide the fact that what just about everybody’s really interested in are the powers available to any given Solar/Demigod/Vampire/insert-splat-here.

    Also, combat can get rather long to roll. Not because the system is overly complex, but because there’s so many… dice to roll. It’s a bit easier when using a program or a dice-rolling script in an IM chat program, but it’s also likely not your cup of tea.

    But, as it stands, you sound like you’re all but set on Star Wars (Saga, I assume?). Maybe you could simply “lock” the Jedi class and bar it for characters until someone earns it?

    Frankly, I always thought that classes that required extensive qualifications were always inherently contradicted by the premise of the d20 starting character: The wuss who could get killed by a box of angry, but statted-out, kittens. I guess d20 modern did it right by separating more advanced class archetypes into its own category, appropriately titled “advanced classes,” which is between “starting classes” and “prestige classes” in availability, power, and specialization.

    Though, yes, I imagine your Longing-To-Play-Jedi friend wouldn’t much enjoy the prospect of not getting to start as a Jedi from the get-go.

    And to those who suggested Shadowrun: Did they ever fix the wonky math that made combat a hit-or-miss affair? The “be overpowered or die” dilemma? Or the imbalance between high-level armor and the ability for high-powered weapons to damage them? I forget the specifics, but I heard that Shadowrun was always kinda off with its combat math.

    ……

    You know, unlike most people, I seem not to be advertising their favorite games, so much as I am shooting down others’. Well.

    I’m also leery of GURPS. I know that it’s technically scaleable, but I had the unfortunate luck to have played with people that treated the optional super-complexity rules as must-haves because they liked them so much.

    Anyway, caveats aside, I’d actually be most willing to suggest the Scion/Exalted line of the Storyteller games, if only because all of the complexity is front-loaded. Once you learn the system, that’s about as complex as it’ll get. While d20-based games start fairly simple and then skyrocket in dice, numbers, and book-keeping frustration as characters gain in power, ExaltScion play doesn’t get that much harder to track as players continue to play. Even with the infamous Charm system.

    Actually, scratch that. The Aeon Trinity’s more sci-fi than either of them, and Trinity and Adventure! are easier to fit to a space opera setting. It’s got the same level of front-loaded complexity as it’s newer siblings, Exalted and Scion, but it requires even less book-keeping than either of them. Just… stay away from Aberrant.

    ……………..

    Okay, actually, go with Star Wars, especially Saga Edition. And don’t forget to tell us how it goes!

    ….

    Wait, I’ve got uber-lucky comment #108!

    Looks like I’ve filled up the Tablet of Destiny.

  107. Ruleslawyer says:

    Personally, I think Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is not too bad. Simple combat system with flexibility, great setting which is both dark and humorous or even darkly humorous. Non leveling system you just change careers if and when you are able to or want to.

  108. LemmingLord says:

    Paranoia. It has an interesting system (where rolling a 20 causes some spectacularly bad effects), an emphasis on roleplaying and GM tyranny (it’s actually against the rules for the players to know the rules, and the GM is actively encouraged to ignore them if it seems funny) and a cool, futuristic setting. And humor. Lots of humor. Definitely worth a look if you would rather shoot your teammates in the back and fight Commie Mutant Traitors instead of orcs. My choice after trying D&D and finding the rules-heavy system got in the way of roleplaying.

  109. Ethan says:

    I’ll put in my two cents for Rifts. And no, I’m not a sixteen year-old. The system allows a player to play nearly any type of character (robot/werewolf/pirate/etc.). It uses all of the fancy dice from your set. There’s plenty of room of munchkin power gamers and “real role-players” to inhabit the same game, mostly because the game has no pretension of having balanced power levels. There are literally giant robot pilots, wizards, and vagabonds (with the special “Eyeball a Fella” ability) in the main rulebook.

    Now, I admit that the system is quite antiquated, arbitrary, and clunky. Okay, actually, it has holes big enough to drive a truck through. I find that this gives players more time to focus on role-playing, as thinking about the rules set… well… that way lies madness. Like, serious, “I just looked at Cthuluhu”-madness.

  110. Annon says:

    I plugged for this in your thread about stats, but it wasn’t enough. Ima plug for it again here :)

    I have been getting ready to run a Game of Control IRL and I am very happy with how the system works. It is fairly simple–55 page book, fifteen pages of which only detail the different ways the Controller (GM) can build their world. It doesn’t use a variety of dice–only a big bucket of d20s–but it is entirely based on the bell curve. That’s right, no modifier at all just roll a few d20s and pick the highest.

    This makes character creation interesting but still easy–there are no classes, but rather a multitude of skills to choose from. The massive number isn’t problematic because most of the skills work the same way–you roll a number of dice equal to the ranks you have in the skill and pick the highest. I’m missing two pages of the book thanks to a misprint and I feel fine, because I can just wing it. This also means I can make any setting I want. If I want a fantasy setting, I throw away all te gun skills and add a few armor and magic skills. Heck, I’m tossing a couple of ancient magic artifacts at my players, and I’ve already created a skill for manipulating them in the span of a few minutes.

    I also like how stats are handled. You pick four distinguishing traits for you character, and as many flaws as you want. These never change as your character progresses–they just represent their natural aptitude. Buying skill ranks is cheaper for skills that rely on your stronger traits, but more difficult in skills that rely on your flaws. It allows for a massive variety in believable characters. My wife has already made in-game avatars for both myself and her to use.

    There are two things that I worry about. First, I have no idea how it would scale up in group size. There is enough variety in the traits and skill to come up with thousands of different concepts which would all be viable, but I don’t have the large-group experience to judge. Second, the combat system is as yet untested. It seems like they have tacked on a system for “resisting damage” after realizing that it is quite easy to die from a single hit, but we’ll see where it goes after I play it…

  111. Baruch says:

    Avoid Shadowrun like the plague! It’s a fun enough game, but it’s a pain to learn.

    I’d say try with the new Star Wars Saga edition. It only requires one book, and I feel it does away somewhat with the chaos of the d20 system.

    Other than that I’d say New World of Darkness (I don’t say the old ones becuase in those you’re restricted to one group, crossover play doesn’t do to well). It allows you to mix all sorts of stuff, and the rules set is very dynamic.

    If all else fails, mix and match. It’s a pain to do, but you can have whatever you want.

  112. XaleD says:

    Shamus,

    I’ll point you towards SpyCraft. d20 based, but actually balanced, and fully customizable. Either Classic or 2.0 are great options. You can get almost the entire Classic line as PDFs. Add in Shadowforce Archer or Dark Inheritance, and you have ShadowRun type capabilities. Check the forums for more info. The designers are VERY active and attentive on there.

    Enjoy and let us all know what you guys decide on.

  113. I’m a huge fan of the RoleMaster/Space Master system. It’s skills based and everything (from actions to combat) is done with d%, making it easy to comprehend. “What’s my chance of jumping to the enemy ship?” “Uh, 23%. You sure about this?” The combat moves fast as one roll determines the hit and the damage. The combat system is, of course, famously brutal, with such classic crits as “Spleen perferated” and “foot torn off,” so it may be a bit of a culture shock to PC’s accustomed to a system where mid-level characters can shrug off a crossbow bolt to the forehead. The only downside I’ve noticed is that it does take a bit to make a character, so you can’t just whip something up on the side for players who may wander in for a session.

  114. Andre says:

    You all may crucify me for this, but I’ll suggest that D&D 4E is coming out soon. I’ll definitely be checking it out; it seems to address all the complaints I have with 3.5E.

    Barring that, I’ll have to second Savage Worlds, even though I’ve never played it. Like you, Shamus, I had the book in my proverbial hands and just decided to wait. It seems like a simple, versatile system that lets you do anything you want without getting too bogged down with mechanics.

    A few months ago, I had a great idea for a really simple system for recreating the zombie survival movie genre as a role-playing game. I started to develop it, with an eye to releasing it as an open-gaming or commercial product, but I ran out of time and it fell to the wayside. Something like that really takes a group of people to design and play-test. So as someone else mentioned, Shamus, why don’t you and your friends start from the ground up and design a system based on what all of you like? Might be interesting, if you get everyone together for weekly play-testing sessions.

  115. sithson says:

    Man I tell you. I give the solution to the ever increasing dissaray of lots of dice versus solo die, and nothing. I tell you I get no respect.

    I have solved the ultimate problem, and still, not even a meh.

    A single bell curved die. Yes its possible, yes I told the secret just above, comment 94. :P

    And in fact im looking to see on line if you could order such a beast. Ill let you know as soon as i find it, or i start mass producing them becuase then and only then will the shreeks of I roll bad and bell curves and whine whine whine, will taunt me no longer. Also: I like pie. Thank you..

    -Hauled away by men in white coats-

  116. Darin says:

    You know, you could always start the guy as a Jedi…

    …then round 2 he gets a virus that eats the midiclorians (or whatever they are) so he slowly (or quickly) loses most of his powers. Let him keep the light saber blaster deflection skills and maybe the “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” sense.

  117. sithson says:

    Ah ha. It didnt take long.

    http://www.chessex.com/Dice/Specialty%20Dice/20_sided.htm

    Take this page, order one, paint or mark the numbers you want to make a curve signle d20 as in post #94 and your done.

    Im sure you could even custom order ones pre-printed. Multiple :P’s all around. Maybe even a :O or something.

    :D
    :D

  118. Kris says:

    Personally, I’m playing in both a Werewolves campaign (not the new edition but the older one) and a Legend of the Five Rings campaign, and they’re both pretty fun. They use a d10 system instead of 20s or 6s, but it does involve a lot of rolling d10s. They both definitely emphasize role playing over combat, especially the Winter Courts in L5R, but combat can be a big part if people want it. Another group of my friends is playing Mutants and Masterminds, which looks like a lot of fun, but the rules aren’t quite as simple I think.

  119. Bryan says:

    I’m going to tell you that the best system to play, hands down, is Exalted. The setting is wonderful, highly conducive to good roleplaying, and can fit all sorts of players’ needs. The key is getting everyone to understand you start as demigods, which means you can do pretty much whatever you want. However, there are lots of other demigods who can quickly overpower you, so it isn’t in your best interest to do so.
    Someone mentioned BESM d20, which is simply an awful, awful way to go. BESM 2nd or 3rd edition, both based off of Tri-Stat, which looks and plays a lot like a simple sort of GURPS.
    HOwever, in the end, since you allready own and have some understanding of GURPS, I would advise to use it, because it’s a great system, uses the bell curve to great effect, and can do any sort of setting you would possibly desire. One of the best campaigns I’ve ever been in was sort of Indiana Jones-ish setup, after relics… before WWII.

  120. rekres says:

    Well, since most of the group is already familiar with D&D 3.5, you might try the new GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line. It basically imports D&Dish dungeon crawl into the GURPS system.

    http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy/
    Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers presents all of the core classes from 3.5, written up as 250 pt GURPS characters.

    http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy2/
    Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons is more advice for the GM on running dungeon crawl style adventures.

    These two definitely give you “Easy to Learn Rules”, “Simple Combat System” and “Bell Curve”. Since they are compatible with the rest of GURPS 4th Edition, its easy to incorporate other elements… in order to satisfy “Roleplaying Over Strategy”

    The only thing left out would be “Fun Dice” since GURPS uses six-siders almost exclusively… but I often throw in d100/percentile in the games I run.

  121. HC says:

    Spirit of the Century and The Shadow of Yesterday both seem to fit what you’re specifically looking for, and are recommended. Other (good) possibilities along those general lines include Don’t Rest Your Head, Dogs in the Vineyard, maybe the Burning Wheel.

    But for sheer elegance and fun, I’d really have to recommend Nobilis. Find a physical copy – game shop, library, bookstore, anywhere you can – and take a look at it. It is diceless, and so does not fit several of your specifications, but is, in a word, remarkable.

    Look it over once, and see if it suits.

  122. Kallahim says:

    My favorite fantasy setting bar none is Earthdawn. The system IMHO was quite easy to understand and character creation did not feel random and complicated.

    I always found dream pod nine (Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles) character system extremely streamlined…i found their vehicle combat overly complex. I would recommend using their mass combat rules for vehicle combat because its basically their character combat rules modified to use vehicles rather than the intricate mini based combat that if you dont like mechwarrior, its not gonna float your boat either.

    If you wanted something space operaish, you could always try d20 modern or somesuch, since everyone understands basic DnD rules its not far of a stretch to d20 modern.

  123. Kallahim says:

    the other possiblity is to use the Star Wars system without the Star Wars setting…make up your own universe and dont have Jedi but maybe having something else that will satisfy your player’s interests. That will basically give you d20 space opera but you can use the star wars templates for the start of your own ideas.

  124. Josh says:

    I would suggest Earthdawn as well… though I must admit a bias, as I’m one of the current developers! ;-)

    It’s a good system for those who are into fantasy, but burned out a little bit on D&D. It uses all the funky dice, scales better than the d20 system (IMO), and has a rich setting that takes many of the classic D&D tropes and puts them in a setting that makes sense.

    You can get more info on the game (along with some free preview downloads) at http://www.earthdawn.com

  125. Nick says:

    Old-school Deadlands. You want interesting dice? How about playing in a western with poker cards as a game mechanic!

  126. AstroBoy says:

    I vote for FUDGE.

    http://www.fudgerpg.com/fudge.html

    as long as you can be bothered making up EVERYTHING in the world (items, foes/monsters, setting, etc) it is asystem which fits all your criteria except the 7 dice set, though it does use a funky sorta set based of d6es of its own.

    Its free too. Me and my group enjoyed it but we fell short in our inexperience to create everything.

  127. Shamus,

    as regards systems with the bell curve effect, you might want to try Shadowrun (as previously mentioned, multiple d6 rolled) or Legend of the Five Rings, which is awesome. L5R is a samurai roleplaying system, where taking a pure combat tweaked class is going to get you in a lot of trouble in court very quickly, and combat is fast and deadly. Only connection with the card game is the names of the clans and their vague inclinations.

    Shadowrun’s rather extreme sillyness of characters can be a bit of a turn off. On the other hand the setting is quite cool, and when the GM screws the PCs he can screw them good and hard.

  128. SquashMonster says:

    Mutants and Masterminds sounds like the system that’d be best suited to what you described. However, it has some really cheesy mechanical breakdowns. Generally, you can take any power, optimize it to the bare minimum effectiveness, and dump the rest of your points into progressing some part of your power on the Time And Value chart to make an overpowered character. But if you’re willing to judge balance for yourself, it works quite well.

    For a different option, I think you would enjoy E6. It’s mostly just what happens when you play D&D and stop character advancement at level 6.
    http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=206323&page=1&pp=40
    It is a lot better-balanced than straight D&D, and has a lot of flavor benefits. The thread I linked explains it better than I can, so check it out.

    Another interesting way to mis-use d20 systems is to do medieval fantasy with d20 modern. It’s supposed to make for a much better experience for low fantasy than D&D does, but I haven’t tried it.

  129. Viktor says:

    I second Roam’s Syndicate suggestion, if you want Cyberpunks and have a good GM. If you prefer fantasy, Adventure Quest is my current favorite. Again, it takes some work on the part of the DM, but it seems to fit all of your criteria, and was designed to avoid the problems of DnD.

    http://www.aquest.com/AQJAERNdownload.htm
    http://rpr.kapsi.fi/RIP/syndicate/

  130. John Callaghan says:

    Nobilis is marvellous indeed: partly because the PCs are incredibly powerful and there are no dice (although there are strict limits on what one can do), it encourages characterisation but people can enjoy being uber-beings too if they like. And it all balances. It lends itself to more scheming than strategy, though, and it sounds like many of your group would enjoy the random factor absent from the game.

    Unknown Armies is a tiny bit like a rock ‘n’ roll Silent Hill too. It’s ace and isn’t a million miles away from Over The Edge (which fulfils the request earlier for a character sheet without stats as such on it: OTE is “three unique traits and a flaw”, all chosen by the player). OTE is less horror-based though, I’d say, although both games are nicely weird.

    I found the Exalted system very complicated, surprisingly so for a White Wolf game. It’s a bit like a RPG of Soul Calibur! It’s a fun setting though, although the Qin system is more intuitive in my opinion.

    Hey, how about Feng Shui?

    But you have a nice opportunity now for you to have a series of one or two session games. “If it’s a genre you’re not so into, try it for this week and your game will be along next time.” After that interlude there’s a chance some of your group might even have expanded their tastes.

  131. Ravs says:

    Have you thought of Traveller? (A far future space setting with a 1960s/1970s SF feel)

    It has gone through a number of incarnations (there is a Gurps version as well) but most people play ‘Classic Traveller’ which was the first. Chargen is fun and unique (you roll up the bones of your ‘previous history’ and may die during Chargen and then using the bones of the previous history to fill in your back story. Combat is infrequent and deadly, the task system is easy – 2d6. (only d6s I’m afraid). The rules are a snap to learn and very customisable. In terms of feel, Serenity/Firefly is very close. I believe you can buy all of the classic traveller stuff on a CD Rom for about $30 – and there is a lot of stuff including adventures. But to get playing you only need to read about 4 booklets (most of which are pretty self explanatory).

    The game is much more about problem / mystery solving than combat. Have a look at the Traveller T20 site where I think you can buy the CD I mentioned. There is also a D20 version of Traveller, (T20) but I would go for the classic version with your criteria. Note that as it was written in the early 80s bits of it need updating but that’s just common sense which you can apply on the fly.

  132. GregThemisCorden says:

    Quote:
    “Another one wants to be the strongest character in the group, and would really like to have PvP.”

    I’d think this one would be hardest to please in a group that focuses on role playing. I had a friend once who played that way – after three evenings we sat down as a group and talked about what we wanted to play. This ended with him leaving (not in an angry way, mind, he agreed that his way wasn’t our way). We were sorry for excluding him (for we liked to spend time with him), but there simply was no place in our group for his gaming style.

    We are friends till today – we just don’t game together.

    Moral of my story?
    I agree with this: first figure out what the group as a whole wants to play (i.e. find some sort of a common ground), then pick the system accordingly. If there is no common ground, maybe you’ll have to split the group, as hard as it is…

  133. Heather says:

    When I started reading this blog, and especially when I got to the bit about the bell curve, the first system that jumped to mind was GURPS. Pretty much everything is 3D6. As implied by the name (Generic Universal Role Playing System) it’s very versatile and you can play just about anything. We’ve had campaigns set anywhere from straight-up fantasy worlds to cyberpunk to superheroes to far-future space explorers, etc. We’ve even had a ‘gate-game’ where we played with everything at once. :)

    However, when I got to the bit about the dice I instantly thought of Serenity RPG. We’ve been playing that for a couple of years now, and it’s a very straight-forward system in terms of rules. The combat is “stat and skill vs other guy’s stat and skill”. If the attacker’s roll is higher, the difference is basic damage, then roll a die for the weapon for additional damage (in a nutshell). And best of all, when we started playing Serenity I was able to bring out all my old, funny dice. Even the D12 gets a good look-in.

    The only downside with Serenity compared to GURPS is that it’s geared for the Firefly universe, so it’s not as flexible. But I have to say, it’s a fun, fun system. And the use of plot point awards during sessions is a huge amount of fun. We use business-card sized copies of the QMX money packs as our plot point markers. It feels just like spending money when you spend ’em. :)

    The best thing about Serenity RPG – one book. With a system like GURPS you can get by on just the basic books, but it does help to have several of the supplements. Serenity is a much smaller outlay, so if it doesn’t work out for your group you’re not out of pocket hundreds of dollars.

  134. Annon says:

    Oh yeah, I forgot about the PvP aspect. In Control, it is constructed so that the DM is treated much like another player. He just has minions and a larger pool of resources than the other players start with. There is actually a system where one of the players can challenge the GM in a duel-of-the-fates sort of way, and the winner gets to be the new GM. Sounds like it would be up your competitive player’s alley…

  135. Skythian says:

    Just finished reading the Mutants & Masterminds 2nd ed core book and, coming from the perspective of a long time HERO/Champions player it seems pretty fresh and easy to learn. Based on your comments about setting, my suggestion would be to use something like this as a systesm since it’s based on the familiar d20 your players are used to and yet versatile enough to really do any setting with. Designing the setting should prove the most challenging really, the advantage of superhero games generally being that they can easily have elements of all genres, the trick is in the mix.

  136. Telas says:

    Savage Worlds. (Two links there…)

    Bell Curve: Not explicitly, although to succeed at difficult tasks, you need to beat the target number by multiples of 4, which is its own inherent bell curve.

    Fun Dice: Check. SW uses all of your funky dice, although your d20 may sit idle for a while.

    Roleplay over Strategy: Check. Some basic combat strategy can be necessary for the BBEGs, but it’s common sense strategy, not rules law. Mooks fall with one wound, so it’s easy to get that “Conan surrounded by the corpses of enemy guards” effect pretty early in the game. Combats of 20 vs 20 can be handled in minutes instead of hours, and the mass combat rules are the best I’ve ever seen, period.

    Easy to Learn: Check. The core rule book is $10, and the free Test Drive is here. It can be played after maybe 5 minutes of explaining, although some of the character generation tweaks may take a bit more (such as attribute vs skill purchases).

    Simple Combat System: Check. Did I mention the quick combats and the mass combat rules? The latter allow the PCs to affect and be affected by the mass combat, all in about 15 minutes.

    Quick rules rundown: Anything you do is a die roll, generally against a target number of 4. Dice ‘explode’, which means if you max out a die, reroll and add; in addition, all “named characters” (including yours) get to roll a d6 in addition to their skill die (think of it as insurance). Your attribute or skill determines the die you use. A good archer will roll his Shooting die of a d10 and his ‘wild die’ of a d6. If either maxes out, he adds and re-rolls. If he beats a 4, he hits (although he can try harder things, like a called shot to the head at a -4). If he gets an 8, he gets better results. Wounds are on a damage track, and you can spend “bennies” (think: action points) to ignore or reroll certain things. Did I mention that the GM gets bennies for his named NPCs?

    Yes, it’s really that simple.

    Please, get the Test Drive and read through it. The game has all of the fun parts of modern gaming, with all of the speed of play of older games (early D&D). I haven’t cracked my D&D books in months since picking up this game.

    Telas

  137. lxs says:

    Your server stopped weeping for mercy some time ago o.O

    I only read 50 or so comments, but here’s my vote for Mage. It sounds like you have a munchkin in your group. Mage (from WW) will make or break him as a genuine RPer. It starts with ultimate power. By defining your character’s belief system you confine zir until it reaches manageable standards. This a) makes min/maxing blatantly self-defeating, b) strongly encourages players to make their power emergent from their character.

    The default setting is modern with shades of cyberpunk and dreamworld, but it should be easy enough to adapt any setting to it.

  138. Robert Conley says:

    If you have GURPS you may want to look at these.

    For more epic style fantasy: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy

    http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-0303
    http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-0304

    Plus they have a kick ass system to use Spaceship system for your space opera.

    http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-0120

    GURPS Martial Arts is really nice if you want to add depth to your weapons combat.

  139. Ferrous Buller says:

    For simplicity and customization, I always favored GURPS: the core rules are fairly straight-forward (or were back in the day when I played – I’ve no idea how many revisions it’s been through since and how much cruft it may have accumulated); and you can pick & choose the elements to incorporate into your setting, rather than being bound to a particular universe.

    So start out with, say, a cross between Serenity & Star Wars: your party is a bunch of misfits in a junker of a freighter on the edge of known space, just trying to stay alive and make ends meet. In the important parts of the galaxy, Big Stuff Is Going Down (war, politics, Cyber Cher Concert, whatever), but it won’t cross the party’s path until you want it to (or they seek it out). Invent your own backstory for, say, psionics: e.g., they’re powerful, but rare and usually hunted down by governments or their proxies (i.e., bounty hunters), either for termination or “recruitment.” This way, the power-munchkins in the group can be the powerful psi-warriors of their wet dreams, but they end up in a whole mess of trouble, too; while the rest of the party figures out how to deal with it. [Help the munchkins? Turn them in for valuable cash prizes? Or just try not to get caught in the crosshairs?]

    You can also gradually escalate the nature of the threat: e.g., early on, it’s just a few stray bounty hunters who happen upon the psionics in the party and think they can make a quick buck by bagging them; but as the party becomes more infamous, the authorities take a greater interest in them. A simple chase structure, but it helps keeps things rolling along as well as explaining away your random encounters.

  140. Nick Pitino says:

    I own a bunch of GURPS books, but have never actually played it. It looks fairly interesting though if seemingly somewhat harsh to learn. Also, I’ve heard a lot of good things about Savage Worlds but never played it and don’t have the book(s) to thumb through.

    System wise, from my somewhat limited experience in the area of “I’ve actually played that!” I’d probably recommend White Wolf’s Storytelling system. It encourages RP and is fairly simple.

    As for setting, I can’t help you there. I hate hate HATE the standard White Wolf settings personally. Every game I’ve played in using the regular settings (especially Werewolf!) seems to attract players that can best be described as ‘Blossoming Flowers of Misanthropy’ and seem to be tailor made to encourage behavior like that.

    Maybe I’ve just had an unlucky string of bad experiences.

    I digress though. The Storytelling system remains my suggestion for a rolling system, but I usually just end up making up my own setting.

    Writing my own setting has the added benefit of pulling the rug out from under those tireless obsessives who approach a ‘Fat Beard at a Star Trek Convention’ level of knowledge about a published setting.

    No matter what you end up with though, have fun!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling_system

  141. MadTinkerer says:

    Shamus, it’s been pointed out a few times in this thread already, but I’d like to point it out again: Savage Worlds is what you want, hands down.

    And I’m not just saying that because I wrote the LATEST version of the Test Drive rules:

    http://www.peginc.com/Games/SavageWorlds/Downloads/TestDrive.pdf

    SW has loads of free supplemental material as well as cheap PDFs of “Toolkits” for different genres and Player’s Guides for campaigns in addition to the usual full-blown campaign settings.

    SW licensees include Green Ronin, Worldworks, Talisman Studios and a bunch of others. Plus there’s the official licensed SW books Pirates of the Spanish Main (which you already put on the side up there) and Solomon Kane.

    Also: have you heard of Deadlands? The latest incarnation of the Weird West is Savage, amigo. ;)

  142. roxysteve says:

    I’ve not played that many different RPG systems*, but from DM standpoint BRP stands out as being streets ahead of the rest in several areas:

    1) It is simple to remember: There are comparatively few tables. Most events boil down to three possibilities as they do in D20 (in slightly different forms) – Opposed stat/skill checks, Raw skill checks and automatic success/failure.

    2) It lends itself well to narrative play – the DM can put the rulebook down and get involved instead of constantly flipping for this rule or that.

    3) It is really, really easy to pick up. Orders of magnitude easier than D20. Yes, I’ve done both.

    4) Combat is very, very simple. Many ex-D&Ders say over-simple. You may not like it for that reason.

    That said, the only high fantasy BRP variant that was made, Runquest, suffered it’s own shortcomings. I haven’t looked at the reprint of Runequest, so can’t comment on the current version.

    Of course, the next game you play will obviously be in preparation for your next screen cap comic, so high fantasy will not be your chosen venue. No, I believe you will be moving into the SF arena, but sticking with a (modified**) version of D20 as you commence your Judge Dredd campaign.

    Bring on the block war!

    Steve.

    * Traveller, original white box D&D, AD&D (briefly), Dragonquest, Villains & Vigilantes, Bushido, EPT and Call of Cthulhu is about it.

    ** Goodbye armor class, and good riddance!

  143. Daviot44 says:

    I would suggest you take a look at Exalted. It’s not as widely known, but I think it’ll fit the bill on all of your criteria (and your friends’ criteria, too) except for different polyhedrons. But it’s all d10s, which is at least different.

  144. baac says:

    MERP MERP MERP MERP… I’ve played almost nothing else for years. The rules are pretty easy, and you can play with as much or as little Tolkien lore as you feel up to. I’ve played about half the games on the market, and I always come back to MERP.

    B

  145. Takkelmaggot says:

    To echo others, Alternity was fun and had a great campaign setting (Star*Drive) with a lot going for it. Unfortunately WOTC, in their infinite wisdom, killed it off to draw attention to the “new” D20 system.

  146. Skulduggery says:

    Savage Worlds?

    Yes, I think that is the right system for you.

    But I can also highly recommend the HERO SYSTEM. SW and HERO are the two best generic systems available. Yeah, it´s a fact.

    Regarding settings: Eberron is cool. And Traveller seems to be (never really played it).

  147. roxysteve says:

    You guys have got to stop recommending classic Traveller.

    Yes it is aces. Yes it is cool (for given values of cool). Yes I own an absolute fortune in books, 15mm minis, starship plans and adjunct games (Snapshot is darn near essential for the inevitable mass combat abord starships Traveller games attract) and therefore can be said to absolutely endorse everything positive you guys have said so far about it (and some of the many negative stuffs too, I might add).

    But Shamus said he wanted poly dice action and Traveller was designed to avoid polydice at all costs. It’s right there in Marc Miller’s designer’s notes as a design goal.

    Boy, I wish I could get players for this game.

    Steve.

  148. Lain says:

    phew,
    149 entries.

    nobody mentions Boot Hill, the perfect Western RPG. You really can play your Eastwood, Wayne, van Cleef nad when it helps your Roy Rogers. Easy to leran, much fun to play.

    Cyperpunk 2020. Ok, more rules, a lot of gear. But when you climbed the hill, you have al lot of fun.
    Brutal action, Most intelligent stories.

    My old GM laughed about the complexity of TV-Shows like Prison Break or Babylon 5. His stories were wide more intelligent.

    By the way: Babylon 5 has also a quite good RPG. Perhaps more, what you want? Good SF and no Jedis…

    Personally I’m fan of the old Warhammer System and the most complex Rolemaster, for giving you some other ideas.

  149. greywulf says:

    Wow. For each gamer, a different game.

    Ok, I’ll weigh in with votes for both Mutants & Masterminds or Savage Worlds. Either will fit the bill, though M&M would be an easier transition for the more ardent D&D gamers. That’s our default system now, with SW (or GURPS) a close second.

    I could shamelessly plug Microlite20 too: http://home.greywulf.net/m20 ‘cos I wrote it. One page of rules that contain d20 distilled down to it’s purest form, with lots of fan-made creations taking the system into many different directions, including into the modern age. The minimalist rules just beg to be fiddled with, and leave plenty of space for actual role-playing to take place.

    It might make a decent system if you want a break while plotting your full-blown campaign.

    Here’s a few images of the /entire/ rules, in pocketmod format, complete with character sheet on the front. True back pocket gaming :)

    http://wiki.greywulf.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/Macropedia/FansOfMicrolite20

  150. tussock says:

    Bell curve. “It makes “special” events more special.” I’d say you want something with rare cascades more than a bell curve (most of which are fudged to give about 5% special events anyway). d20 with the “reduced criticals” option would do. Add in the other thing that makes extra 20s cascade and you’re there.

    Fun dice: d20, less so with SW Saga edition. Cortex also, in Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, and a couple other games. Most other modern systems avoid them.
    http://cortexsystemrpg.org/

    Roleplaying over Strategy: Tri-stat, and various other much weirder systems with fate cards, and so on.

    Easy to learn rules: The ones you already know; d20. Seriously, don’t bother learning something new if you’re at all happy with what you’ve got; they’re all deeply flawed.

    Simple combat system: SW Saga edition if you’re going d20. Still a little fiddly, but pretty strait forward in application.

    BESM for your multi-genre stuff, or GURPS with only the simplest combat options if you like it grittier. d20Modern with d20Future and various supplements covers a lot of genres now too, if you’ve got the dosh to buy the set, as does the odd third party ruleset like True20 (which doesn’t use the funny dice, just the d20).

    Toon or Paranoia to let off some steam. Amber diceless for truly epic roleplaying-heavy stuff.

    Cannon issues? Ditch the cannon. The Star Wars saga edition is a good system, just consider it generic wild-west with samurai in space as Lucas did and reinvent the backstory to be whatever doesn’t drag you down.

  151. Sandrinnad says:

    I’ve got to put my vote in for Deadlands: Hell on Earth
    ALL the dice AND cards. Old West types, futuristic types, magic, mental powers, swords, and guns! Easy to learn, fun to play. As dark or as light as you like it.

    or good old GURPS :)

    (but I like Deadlands better ;) )

  152. Tommi says:

    Start the game big, play it hard and fast, and have it end when major conflict ends. Then start another one. The risk of playing one game in a non-favoured genre is much less if the game will not be a multi-year epic. And, if players want to continue with the same characters, start a new game with them and the same setting, with maybe a few slow years skipped.

    For making special rolls special, hero points of some variety work better than only randomness, because that way the special roll will actually matter.

  153. “Villains & Vigilantes”

    Now THAT takes me back to the good ol’ days when all you needed for exciting superheroic role-playing was the thin rulebook, a reverse Polish notation calculator, a large dry-erase board for the calculations, several reams of paper, and an advance degree in mathematics to complete a fight that lasted 5.678 seconds…

  154. TalrogSmash says:

    Sometime 5 or so hours from now I will finish reading all the comments. Is anyone in your group familiar with Rifts? Tons of books to customize the system however you like but you (the GM) really have to know whatever books you allow in backwards and forwards because there are no indexes and the books are arranged rather haphazardly. And for the love of all that is decent and holy, if a player brings you a Rifter magazine, just set it on fire before they start begging.

  155. Skulduggery says:

    Jeez!

    156 comments and nobody mentioned WUSHU.

  156. Buddha says:

    Shamus,

    Another vote for Savage Worlds, which if you own the Pirates of the Spanish Main rulebook, you already have. And for setting, with the player’s wanting such a diverse group… Rifts. Converting Rifts to Savage Worlds may have been done already, somewhere online. The setting is gonzo fun! If you can find it, Nexus: the Infinite City might work, too…

    Buddha

  157. Zack says:

    Ok it it not possible to suggest something perfect for you. First off your group is too big to roleplay, hard stop. In Dnd with 8 people the only thing you can do where everyone will get to participate is have combats.

    I play in groups of all sizes and sometimes our big groups break up into small groups for mini-runs. Whenever we break into a small group the effect is dramatic: we get more roleplaying, experience more plot, and everyone gets more GM time. I think our last 3 man mini-session covered material equivalent to a month worth of the full group playing.

    So if you truly want to play around in different environments I suggest runnign some one-shots or mini-campaigns. Where each run can be a different system or have different players. You can have a high roleplaying mystery in a diceless system. A heavy combat military survival game using a heavy number system, etc.

    Basically by breaking into smaller runs you can play with a number of different systems/ideas and satisfy most people just not all at the same time. It also is a great approach when some people are not going to be available every week (e.g. summer). One shots are even better for this, but if you are experimenting with a new rule system the group will take most of a session to figure out the basic rules. (e.g. that is how long it takes to create characters and teach Gurps to a group of Dnd player for example. But I have run a one shot in one night in a new system by playing rules-light and pre-generating the characters)

    Now if you are playing with wildly different settings (which are not really fleshed out as it is only a mini-run) you may want a softer roleplaying system. (Mage, BeSM, Fudge, etc) This gives a lot of freedom for the GM to handwave and does not require you to know a billion rules before the run starts.

    Big eyes small mouth is great for a fun session or two but I feel it is too cartoony for serious stories. Still it is great for a free association mental romp though imagination land. Just don’t expect to have a story the group will follow, the group will create the story, you just exist to give challenges and try to make the story coherent. It is really different style of GMing. It is kind of like trying to run a DnD group through a paranoia campaign. There is some risk that Dnd players will just “not get it”. But it can be fun to just let the characters imaginations run free. Dnd and many other rule systems have really taken to punishing player creativity lately and it is fun to let players stretch their imagination for a change, it is just very hard to run a campaign like that as the Gm has less control, it is like skiing on black diamonds while blindfolded.

    You can also use any system you are familiar with but lighten the rules a bit. Take Dnd or Gurps, ban prestigue classes, remove optional rules and focus on making things make sense. Who cares if the book says you can’t move and open a door, use common sense instead of the rules to make a fun story. Lighter hand on the rules gives a lot more control.

    Note – you have to be clear early that you are rules light so the “crunchy players” are not unhappy that their size large half-ogre berserker is not getting free trip attack with spiked chain on everyone in 15 feet once every round with a free follow up attack on each person that falls…

    You tell people you are only using the core rules and are hand waving things like cover, attacks of opportunity, grappling. Then run the game more like a drama.

    Gurps is great in that you can strip out all the rules and just have a resolution system and it still plays well. Also you can use it to run fantasy, sci-fi, and fuzzy-bunny political adventures on alternating nights so it isn’t a bad framework for hanging mini-runs on. My main problem with Gurps are
    1) character generation takes a while (BTW. check out Gurp character sheet for help. It is awesome! – http://sourceforge.net/projects/gcs-java/)
    2) Gurps is hard to balance compared to Dnd (CR is great for encounter scaling)
    3) If you start adding optional rules Gurps gets mechwarrior complex really fast.
    4) Lastly min-maxers may have a field day with their blind, mute, legless superhero so you have to police them a bit. I pre-generate characters for mini-runs though, so this has not been an issue for me. Make a “crunchier” combat character and the min-maxer will grumble a bit but then take to mowing down swarms of greebs with gusto.

    Pre-generation also helps limit the rules the group will need to understand in a given adventure. No mages/psions on the first run. Maybe the second game will have guns and horror, etc. You can slowly add rules in limited sets rather than requiring everyone to jump in whole hog. My last game was run using the free version of Gurps-light so that my group did not need to own any books.

    So in summary: try some smaller games rather than another campaign. Invite people to GM their own mini-run one week. Play around with systems you have not had chance to try. And most importantly just keep it light and fun. I don’t think you can be everything to everyone and this gives you freedom to experiment with pleasing different people in turn.

  158. Solka says:

    If you want a low-level rule set, where 5-6 high-level players can’t dare to charge 30 orcs except if they have every strategic advantage (and even then…), I’d recommend Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. It has a nice magic system, good – and risky – combat rules, and the players actually will try to avoid getting themselves into trouble uselessly, the combat being as dangerous as it is.

    30 orcs are pretty dangerous anyway. Will always be in that setting.

  159. Miako says:

    Star Wars. Pirates. Cyberpunk. Superheroes. The giant robot stuff. Vampires. Werewolves.

    Okay. This screams Kulthea (Shadow World). You can get robots, werewolves, vampires (not player vampires), pirates, spaceships… all in a medieval fantasy world that the players have to work their tails off to find. So a world of exploration.

    I have always liked Rolemaster’s wraptoinfinity system (if you roll 95+, you roll again and add to the first, if you roll 5 or less, you roll again and subtract to the first. makes criticals much more interesting — plus this can keep on going, so rolling two 95s in a row means you roll again and keep adding).

    But choose whatever system you want. Start with medieval pirates, and have them pick up rumors of ancient magic (possibly with someone nearby who will pay them to explore the cyberstuff).

    If this would make people’s heads explode, I am sorry. But why not werewolves and vampires in a secret underground robot lair??

  160. Zack says:

    Shamus with my earlier idea of one shots you would allow the player (or everyone) to be a Jedi one week, but then the next week everyone plays droids/cowboys/etc.

    Also if everyone is more comfortable playing Dnd you can just switch to using 3d6s for rolling. You get to use the same charts and difficulties but everything is a lot more middle weighted. The down side to this is someone with 2 points more attack will hit 50% more so min maxers come out ahead. Using 2d10 lightens the bell-curve effect but it is 11 centered instead of 10.5 centered so players will be rolling .5 higher on average.

  161. Namfoodle says:

    Wow, this might be the most comments ever! I’m waiting for d100 #2 to show up. I’m gonna have to check out some these recomendations.

    Anyway, sometimes the setting can be more important than the system. I just started running a 3.5 campaign using the new Pathfinder adventure path from Paizo. It’s great, the writing is really good and if you have questions the writers will answer them on the message boards. Everything is included: adventures, background info on the world, new monsters, etc. Makes it easy on me to DM because with wife, work and kids I don’t have a lot of time between sessions to work on the campaign.

    I used to have a bunch of Traveller books but we didn’t manage to play it much back in the day. But it was fun to draw up starship plans and think about kicking butt in battle armor with a plasma rifle. I wonder if I still have those books squirreled away somewhere?

    I will always have a soft spot for Rolemaster, also known as Rollmaster and Chartmaster. Rolling a “Natural 20” will always be the clasic gamer moment, but the results of rolling over 300 + bonuses in a d100 system are always spectacular.

    I don’t know if I can recommend HERO. I’ve played it some, and some of my friends played it a huge amount and then finally decided to drop it, mostly in favor of d20.

  162. Davesnot says:

    Here’s a fun GURPS thing to do.. introduce them to the system by making themselves out of the rules… make them kinda their ideal self (ie.. what they picture in the mirror.. not what they really are).. then.. Freejack them into another time.. thus.. they are in the space opera.. have the freejacker (it’s a movie.. Freejack.. google it).. mess up the process and all of them get away.. and thus are free to choose what to do in the world..

    .. thats a fun GURPS deal..

  163. James says:

    Play Paranoia. A mad communist-fearing computer that rules a city, and you play as one of it’s occupants. Furthermore, as everyone is born in six-packs, you have 6 lives, and so teamkilling is AOK! Paranoia is a great setting, and the Yellow Black Boxes are just fantastic.

  164. Ingvar says:

    I’m currently mostly playing GURPS (because that is what people I know locally play), but I grew up playing assorted systems based off the old CHaosium games (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest), via the “Basic Roleplaying” stripped-down rules.

    They’re a fairly decent fit, but tend towards being skill-centric rather than level-centric, so you character(s) improve by getting better at individual skills rather than by suddenly getting better rules and more hit points. Also, the characetrs don’t, really, get any more hit points, so it’s possibly harder to play “really epic” things.

  165. Ryan Speck says:

    I highly recommend just saying “Screw it” and playing Tales From The Floating Vagabond; chaos, fun, intense humor, simple rules, tons of dice, and did I mention the humor? It can really be whatever the group wants it to be (as long as its funny and somewhat cliched) and people can draw from whatever genre they like to mint their character.

  166. Namfoodle says:

    Paranoia is hilarious, but it’s a pretty narrowly focused genre. I really doubt that it’s something that would appeal to everyone in Shamus’s group.

    I like the idea that is surfacing here that using a system where combat is riskier than D&D is likely to force more role-playing. I think this idea has a lot of merit.

    I read a message board post about a D&D homebrew system (the Grimcleaver system) where the PCs didn’t get any more hit dice as they went up in level – just +1 per level plus CON bonus, I think. You could have a 10th level fighter with under 50 hp. Since combat is so much more likely to result in death, the PCs spend more time trying to thing through problems instead of fighting.

    I have a friend who insists that “D&D is NOT a role-playing game, it’s a wargame!”

    To which I alway respond: “There’s such a thing as a tactical role, so that’s role-playing too!”

  167. Nothing says:

    Shamus, I think I have a good suggestion for your Star Wars campaign. I was reading a star wars book a involving the jedi academy before episode 1 (don’t judge me). One thing that was stressed heavily in the book was that it was how hard it was to become a jedi. The jedi academy would reject anyone who even had a small chance of turning to the dark side or they weren’t young enough when they started indoctrination or if they had even small “defects” (ie. Asthma? you can’t be a jedi! ). I’m guessing this unnamed player would not have even been considered as a jedi. They did however direct unacceptable force users into jobs that relied heavily on the force (crop growth, other stuff, I don’t know). You could force the player to start as one of these rejected force users. Make him start with “non-military” force powers and learn the violent powers as his character progressed. Someone like that would most likely not attract the attention a jedi does and the Hight of the Empire time period would have a lot of possibilities.

    I would like to mention that I never played that system so I have no idea if it is possible or not. This is just my two cents to maybe help out.

  168. C David Dent says:

    My Wife has weighed in with Serenity, but if you want to have fun, just throw the rich back-story and wonderful layers characterizations out of the window and use a home-grown campaign.

    Instead of the wild-west flavor of Whedon’s universe you could have sort of an ancient, but decaying Roman-esque civilization. Instead of dozens of worlds and hundreds of moons put in an easy dozen worlds with distinct civilizations and character. No FTL? No Problem, just include that.

    Maybe have the worlds languishing in a golden age … now recovering from an old war with an enemy they believe is either dormant, or better yet, gone.

    Sounds familiar you say? It aught to…it is Battlestar Galactica just before the series starts. And BSG has just had a game released under the “Cortex System” which is the same system as Serenity.

    And there is a lot there that you can change as well…Look around their Forums and see that they have magic, Tech, and lots of meaty source material–Drawn from the Boob Tube itself.

    I think that something Cotex-based might suit you well…who knows, a Blake’s Seven game might be pretty cool!

  169. bigpumpkin says:

    As a role-playing system, I can’t recommend Heroquest highly enough. The basic mechanics are elegant and the flexibility of the ‘anything can be a skill’ concept makes for genuinely distinctive characters. Where most newcomers to the game struggle is with the setting: Glorantha. I’d argue that this is a strength of the game, since it means that there is a wealth of background material available, both in published form and on the web. You can download a load of samples from the main rulebook here:

    http://www.glorantha.com/support/samples.html

    There’s also nothing to stop you ignoring the ‘canonical’ background material, or indeed ditching the setting altogether, and creating your own world. One good (published) example of this is Mythic Russia, but there are other interesting examples to be found.

  170. Bogan the Mighty says:

    I thought I’d mention to you Shamus that after looking at all these awesome suggestions everyone has given over the last couple days my personal choice is still with Star Wars, and I don’t actually care which version of it. I think I would personally prefer either of the warhammer RPGs to play. I love the background to both the fantasy and 40k plus the combat sounds fun to me. There just is not fancy dice with either of them all being d10s. Oh well just my new official 2 cents on the matter.

  171. icekatze says:

    hi hi

    How to deal with jedi characters: “Tell the player they can be a jedi as long as they don’t mind not having a light saber or any force powers and see if they still want to play one.”

  172. ArchU says:

    A group of eight isn’t too large – thirteen is too large (yes, I have done it!). 8 is about my upper limit of ability to manage respectably but anything above that is pushing (or exceeding) the boundaries of tolerance and the gaming group starts to feel more like a kindergarten.

    Can’t go past White Wolf /WoD games if you want to focus on roleplaying although the rules can be a little testing at first (at least aim for the 3rd edition rules, they’re fairly unambiguous). Maybe try the Mage system in a different setting if you want to be able to mix some fantasy and sci-fi together, or take Aberrant for a spin.

    If all else fails and nobody can decide, whip out the Munchkin RPG (Steve Jackson Games) for some laughs, or Paranoia XP (Mongoose Publishing) if TPK hilarity is the go =D

  173. Anonymous Bosch says:

    I’d second Call of Cthulhu, or TWERPS. The Worlds Easiest Role-Playing System is very basic, with about 5 rules, so most of the action has to be through RP.

  174. Enigmatic Chronomancer says:

    um wow i hope your still exepting comments here or will at least take it into account cause i would like to mention a game i play that is so far the best i have ever seen. Demon Hunters. the game is really new (like been out 5-6 years tops) but is so well done. combat once you have adapted is quick and easy, (like 10 minutes tops) there are no translations (20 gives you a +5 bonus) all the rolls are at face value (every skill just contains a die type for instance my strength is d8) the skills are easy to alot. takes alot of homebrew but that means there are alot of twists you can do (pretty much every monster is homebrew) there are no limitations (let me put it this way one of the given NPCs is a sentient ambulatory extremly badass tree (that beautiful son of a birch)and you are capable of doing anything both in and out of combat (the increase and decrease in die steps is an amzing way to cause variety for instance stabbing a person in the eye imposes -4 die step to hit +4 die step to damage which is probably fatal)
    the game takes place in modern times but the system can be easily changed to accomadate any setting with ease. the given setting has the characters fighting for a secret organization working for heaven (though not always christian you could easily play a decendent of zues or loki or whatever) to hunt down supernatural threats.
    i seriosly recommend it. i have never seen a better game and i have seen at least half the games you listed

  175. Knaight says:

    Fudge, which is available free online, sounds right up your alley.
    1. It has a 4 die bell curve.

    2. It has fun dice, with even distribution of blank sides, sides with a +, and sides with a -.

    3. By default it isn’t much of a strategy game and doesn’t use a grid. It was built to get out of the way while providing a framework, so that role playing could take center stage.

    4. It has simple, easy to learn, consistent rules that are nonetheless a powerful game engine.

    5. It has a simple combat system, or 3 separate simple combat systems you can choose from(basically 1 and two variants). One of these is skill+dice vs. opponents skill(dice center around 0, so its fair), one of these is an opposed roll with winner hitting, one is just making stuff up using rolled skill as a vague guideline. I personally like opposed roll with winner hitting.

    It meets all 5 of your requirements perfectly, I use it routinely and have the exact same 5 requirements, although number 2 isn’t particularly important.

  176. jubuttib says:

    Though I’ve only really played New World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu (only dabbled with D&D and GURPS) I’d recommend it to anyone interested in roleplaying as opposed to to rollplaying. Combat is fluent and relies heavily (and I mean heavily) on the narrative, since the only thing to keep track of (most of the time) are hitpoints and energy (which can be blood, mana, essence or something other depending on the character). No grid or anything like that.

    The downside is that you need lots of D10s (I have 30 just in case when I play, though I rarely need more than 10. But it’s always fun to build castles when my character isn’t around for the action).

    But the best part of the system is the versatility (and the golden rule of the system, “rules are just a guideline, if you’re having fun, you’re playing it right”). We’ve played modern horror, medieval fantasy, western, Cthulhu and so on using the Storytelling System, and often in the same story (unfortunately space opera isn’t really supported at the moment, though you can always make up rules for the stuff you need). And everything fits together. Humans, vampires, werewolves, changelings, prometheans (think Frankenstein’s monster), hunters, mages and pretty much anything you can think of can be played with the same basic rules, which are really easy to learn (I learned most of what I’ve needed to know during the first hour of my first session). And you can easily focus on physical, mental, social, epic, average joe, or just throw everything together. My first character started out as a one dimensional brawler, but later grew into a social manipulator who can still handle himself when the going gets tough.

    With the obvious storytelling and GM skills your group possesses I think you’d come up with something that would please everyone.

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