Time to settle things up

So Veeky Forums, What's your favorite medieval fantasy RPG and why ?

WFRP, 1ed.

>grabs popcorn
>ready to watch 4urries and 5tards shill the shit out of their games

GURPS

Final Fantasy Tactics. I really enjoyed the characters.

Original DnD. That includes 0e, 1st edition, and 2nd edition, plus all the modern retroclones and iterative.

All the rules of DnD actually make sense, fit together well, and help push forward the core gameplay mechanics of dungeon crawling and exploration. It's a more whole and focused game experience unlike the more vague and unfocused modern versions of DnD that people play. Not even necessarily saying they're bad, they just don't have the supreme game design the originals have.

Best post

This as well. Personally I lean towards the 2nd edition, purely because it combines them all into one big clusterfuck where you can essentially use all the rules or bring up any adventuring model. And it's about equally comfortable with old-school lethal dungeon crawls and the new story-based epic quests, sometimes both within the same game. And with all that, its rules still function as well.

I mean, yeah, it's already showing signs of unfocus, but it still works well with what it does.

This. Veeky Forums memed me into thinking GURPS was too clunky and boring for so long, and when I actually tried it out turns out it's pretty dang fun and not all that hard to run, while also having the option to go "full detailed simulator".

I sort of agree. I love the general premise of earlier D&D (although it's kinda limiting, feels made purely for dungeon crawls), but the rules are too... I don't know how to say it. Feels like there's no cohesion, surprise is weird as fuck, there's no rules for anything other than combat, thieves get skills which are, well, pretty shitty and clunky...

I'd like an OSR that does an actual update to the rules, rather than just re-doing everything again (S&W, LL, OSRIC...) or introducing their weird gimmicks (LotFP) and changing the game way too much (Castles & Crusaders).

For fucks sake, all I want is a playable version of 2e.

Mutants and Masterminds

D&D 4e.

It does fantasy heroics better than anything else on the market, the mechanics actually work (with the math fixes), and what issues it does have are much easier to rectify than the alternatives.

I get why some people don't like it, but I've never found my immersion to be particularly fragile so my group enjoy it just fine.

I don't know that I have a single favorite. There are things that I like about most of them I've tried.

D&D 5e is a really easy entry point into tabletop roleplaying, and I like that player characters get some new feature whenever they level up.

D&D 3.5e is a nostalgic favorite because it's what I got my start with, and as a DM I like the process for creating NPCs being basically the same as a player character, and Pathfinder is basically 3.5.5.

The Dragon Age RPG has a great core mechanic. 3d6, with one of the dice being a different color than the other two. If you get doubles on any two of the dice, you get get "stunt points" equal to the number on the off-color die, which you can spend for a variety of effects, including dealing extra damage, getting an extra attack, disarming your opponent, repositioning yourself or your target, etc. Unfortunately, the rest of the system is half-assed/tries to emulate DA:O too closely.

The A Song of Ice and Fire RPG recognized from the outset that, in addition to personal-scale combat, it needed to include rules for mass combat, fiefdom building, and "social combat." The problem is that each of those subsystems is too shallow and easily gamed.

I love GURPS 4E's modular depth -- you can play at whatever depth of rules complexity the group wants (I like pretty deep rules). However, creating monsters from scratch can be a pain, and for groups that want really tactical combat, mapping in hexes can be burdensome.

3.5 because I hate medieval fantasy

>Medieval fantasy
>With platemail and guns

Burning Wheel, followed by Torchbearer.

When I'm running 5e has become my favorite. It's easy to get people into tabletop games with it and it cuts down on a lot of the burdensome things like grappling rules.

I still enjoy playing in a pathfinder game that's been going for almost 5 years though. I think playing in 5e gets stale, even if you adapt a lot of older content to it.

I haven't even read the rulebook for the Song of Ice and Fire RPG. Is it worth cruising through even if it's just to pull ideas and mechanics to introduce to another system?

This. Simplicity is exactly what I look for in a medieval fantasy RPG. I leave the granularity to the grim dark Dark Heresy, and Star Wars for more interesting stories. Our players want medieval to emulate the "dumb mindset" of the era!

4e DnD.
Great for heroics and enjoyment for the entire group.

>The Dragon Age RPG has a great core mechanic. 3d6, with one of the dice being a different color than the other two. If you get doubles on any two of the dice, you get get "stunt points" equal to the number on the off-color die, which you can spend for a variety of effects, including dealing extra damage, getting an extra attack, disarming your opponent, repositioning yourself or your target, etc.
This is super cool and I'm going to find some way to incorporate this into GURPS.

This.
People complaining about DnD or saying "have you tried not playing dnd" are using the system as fantasy super heroes adventure game when the system is designed around dungeon crawls.

Savage Worlds, reasons

>People complaining about DnD or saying "have you tried not playing dnd" are using the system as fantasy super heroes adventure game when the system is designed around dungeon crawls.
>4e
>not about fantasy super heroes
5e and to a lesser extent 3.5 drift quite a ways away from pure dungeon crawlers too.

Will admit you're totally right about earlier editions.

You forgot the why.

That is my biggest issue with D&D as a whole. They're only good at a certain thing but the rules never tell you what that certain thing is. Then players try to say you can do anything in [their edition] with only a few dozen pages of houserules and homebrew, which still won't fix that the core mechanics still don't do what what you want. At least more players seem to be aware of what their favorite edition does well and that D&D is far from generic.

Now, when you play to the assumptions and strengths of the edition, it's hard to beat what it does. Except for 3/PF where a lot of the unlicensed offshoots do it better because they focus on a single aspect of what it tried to do.

4e does seem like the exception to this, possibly because it's a narrower system in general.

4e is like the layman's perception of what you do in D&D (miniatures, combat roles, special abilities/dailies, supernaturally heroic low-level PCs, etc) made manifest. It reminds me of what 3e looked like from the outside and how I thought it worked before I actually played it. There's no mistaking what it is designed to do.

When you play it, you know what it does and that no amount of tweaking is going to change it. I think that's why there was no middle ground when it came out and might explain the hate for newfags who think that's what an rpg is.

I actually prefer 4e to 5e, but i haven't played enough rpgs. I'm sure if I could convince my group to try other things, I would have a new favorite. I really want to try burning wheel!

Well, I'd clarify that statement. 4e is an RPG, but it's also not everything that an RPG can be. Then again, I feel like 3.PF convinced more people it was the right/only way to be than 4e did.

You're right, I should have been more clear there. 4e newbs were a temporary problem (at least for me when I ran a different system for some friends at the time). 3.PF is much worse about misrepresenting what it can do and what it can do well.

Symbaroum

Of the dedicated fantasy systems 4e, Barbarians of Lemuria, Dungeon Crawl Classics are my favorite. Dungeon World gets a honorable mention (once I read through my backlog and find the fantasy adventure PbtA that's actually doesn't screw up so much from AW, that'll get on my recommended list).

I also want to try cryptomancer because it is so weird.

Of generic systems, Savage Worlds, FAE and Strike!, all houseruled a bit.