Looking for a non-D&D system of high adventure and long character arcs

My group is looking to start a game with a clear premise: the characters would begin as simple peasant scrubs with no skills and no significance, but through many years of adventure and hardship they would grow and advance into heroes and finally something a bit more than a regular mortal. Basically the longest possible character arc.

You'd think that sort of a thing would be pretty common, right? Well, apparently not. Most things seem to be fairly gritty and low-concept with characters starting out as easily-killed peasants and ending with relatively low-level heroes that're still pretty easily killed. It's like they're all trying to subvert some trope that never really existed in the first place.

The only system any of us know that allows it is the various editions of D&D. Everybody hates D&D, and none of us can decide which edition we hate the least - everything from 2nd to 5th edition, along with a couple retroclones, is brought up and shot down. So now we don't have a system at all.

Are there really no other systems that would do this sort of a thing properly?

Gurps?

>My group is looking to start a game with a clear premise: the characters would begin as simple peasant scrubs with no skills and no significance, but through many years of adventure and hardship they would grow and advance into heroes and finally something a bit more than a regular mortal. Basically the longest possible character arc.

Please come back when your campaign dissolves after three sessions so i could tell you "I told you so".

Runequest, Burning Wheel

Burning Wheel. Legend of the 5 Rings if you are down for samurai. The players are strong, but die fast. At high levels though the characters can pull some pretty action movies moves on mooks, and certain warrior schools get really silly.

Alternatively shadowrun.........It is hard as balls to play and is grossly married to its own setting, but I found the street cred and karma systems helpful for long form narrative. Also the contacts system was neat for really showing players the ongoing nature of the relationships. Downside, its cyberpunk and that special brand of heroics just won't fly.

>a clear premise: the characters would begin as simple peasant scrubs with no skills and no significance, but through many years of adventure and hardship they would grow and advance into heroes and finally something a bit more than a regular mortal

That's not a premise. That's an objective.

Are you dead set on medieval fantasy?

My D&D group plays two 5-6 hours sessions per week for 8 months now. Never had any single quarrel.

Just "medieval fantasy" is a very broad premise: there'll be an infinite number of adventures to throw at the players, even without leaving the fantasy-Europe it'd inevitably start from, and if they do get bored of that it'll be easy to toss them to middle-east, far east, dark jungles of the south, frozen north, or wherever, even other planes and hell itself and whatnot. It's like the biggest platter possible.

I suppose we could try spreading out to some tighter and more obscure premises with less material available, but I think we've given ourselves difficult enough a task as it is.

You're cutting off a lot of potential systems that way, that's why I'm asking. Not to mention that there seems to be a GRRMitty trend in fantasy of late, resulting in heaps of material that doesn't fit your plan and drowns out the options that would.

Eh, I tend to prefer Conan and other classics. Conan is pretty good for this sort of stuff, I feel.

>Conan is pretty good for this sort of stuff, I feel.
But Conan's literally the opposite of that. He didn't start as a dweeb, nor did he grew much in power, most of his conquests were riches'n'bitches which he lost by the next book, his only major "power up" was when he became a king.

Dungeon Crawl Classics, then? It's all about playing out all those classic fantasy stories.

>like they're all trying to subvert some trope that never really existed in the first place
It does exist, it's DnD.

For what you want there are a couple options. The simplest would be to use a generic system that allows a huge power variance. Ordered from least migraine inducing to most, Big Eyes Small Mouth, BASH, Mutants and Masterminds, GURPS, and HERO would all be such games.

Most games of that type are pretty complex, have a long learning curve, and tend to get sluggish because of rule glut, but whether those things bother you and your players is really just a matter of taste.

Another option would be to go with a more narrative system, where the power scaling isn't done in the system, it's done through context. So, in numbers or dice, a character might not seem to really have advanced that much, but the GM would scale up the power level of the game. A "level 1" and "level 20" character might have an attack roll that is almost the same, but at level 1 it only knocks down a guy, whereas by level 20 it is taking out whole platoons of men. That can work pretty well with narrative systems, if your players are cool with it, and won't feel gypped out of not having bigger and bigger numbers to add together or ever larger numbers of dice. Those things make the game slower, but some players feel cheated without them.

FATE would be the most common and probably the most solid game in that category, but RISUS, MiniSix, Fuzion, and many others could do the same thing.

A third way would be to actually switch systems during the game. You could start in a pulpy game, then at a certain point port characters into a super hero system. That would probably be the clumsiest way, unless you found two systems that feel similar. Like jumping from World of Darkness core to Exalted.

I don't know - I feel like there's a fairly clear progression: he was a simple thief at his younger ears, fought some men and monsters in the occasional duel, dealt with a wizard by the help of an eldritch abomination, and then only later on got around commanding armies and fighting ancient wizards all on his own and taking on hosts of men without help - like, I'm not sure if the younger Conan could've fought off a couple dozen assassins springing into his bedchambers, followed by a soul-eating demon, while half-naked. He was kind of this impatient easily-provoked asshole when he was younger, and got more thoughtful and wise in his later years.

Or maybe it's just me reading too much into these things. I do agree that it's not a perfect example in any case.

DCC was considered and ended up as some of the least favored systems. Nobody likes the funnel system nor the spells.

>Burning Wheel
>Legend of the 5 Rings
>shadowrun
>Conan

None of these do what OP asks for, running a gammut from noobies to demi-gods.

Burning Wheel's not terrible, though - the shades, going from regular to heroic to supernatural, do a pretty good job with it.

>while half-naked
He's always half naked. He's Conan.

He did actually wear armor more often than you'd think.

Lies!

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition. You can literally start out as a rat basher and end up slaying giants if you survive.

More DnD clones that you might want to try to pitch to your group:
Fantasycraft
Radiance RPG

The solution is clear: You must make your own system.

>giants
>end game bosses

By OP's definition giants would be mid-game at best. The true end game foes, the dragons, are forever outside your reach in WFRP.

I've made my own system and am looking for testers, it fits EXACTLY what you want out of it! This is my first Veeky Forums post, so I have no idea what's allowed, but email me at [email protected] if you want the details.

>You must make your own system.

Not OP, but I'm interested. I should make a separate thread, but since it could interest OP as well, let's ask here:
what steps do you usually follow to create a system?
Veeky Forums really needs some a sticky with some good guides for beginners

>getting Veeky Forums to agree on anything
>getting a sticky on Veeky Forums
Well, good luck.
>asking Veeky Forums about system design
Whoa there, Satan.

Most of the games people are recommending are presuming the PCS are already competent if only local heroes or professionals. He seems to be requesting a system that starts you off as similar to an NPC class and more character modulation than DnD.

Personally I would recommend 5e DnD but I think the OP probably already considered that one.

And that is why Dungeon Crawl Classics is your answer. You begin as naught but a piddly peasant in it.

It has a wee bit of a problem in that it's shit.

You are the shit one.