What are your favorite tabletop RPGs and why are they your favorite?

Literally the only right answer.

Personally I started with 3rd edition, so I don't actually have much nostalgia for 2e. I just like it for its own merits, for the sufficient old-school feel and tone while still allowing more options and the capability for new-school story-based games. Also bards are cool.

I also like Burning Wheel, for when I want to do something more story-based. Every mechanic in it clinches together just right, character development is great, and the fantasy bit actually feels fantastic

Savage Worlds, for the fast-paced pulp adventures. Task resolution is swift, fun, and I just friggin' love the smell of exploding dice.

I've never gotten to play GURPS but I just fucking love the character creation system. It's the only system that I like to make up a bunch of guys for, just for the fun of it with no game in sight.

40k-based games, WFRP and Dark Heresy and the others, are also pretty great. They fit well with the setting and are flavorful and gritty.

Mutants & Masterminds. Open-ended enough to do damn near any common setting well, but succinct enough that, if you have a decently fleshed-out idea, making a character doesn't take hours and dozens of books.

Also, that health mechanic.

l5r 4th ed
simple enough to learn and really fun to use

Legends of the Wulin. Absolutely fantastic combat system, unique blend of narrativism and crunch, a lot of character options and easy to homebrew for. If only the core book wasn't such a fucking frightful mess that makes it way harder than it needs to be to play.

4e is also pretty great, it does fantasy heroics in the style I prefer better than any other version of D&D. It's not for everyone, but for my purposes and for the style of games I want, there's not much better.

Don't Rest Your Head and Maid RPG get honourable mentions. Both rules light games I'd only ever play in a one shot or short campaign, but both perfectly designed light systems for creating and supporting a specific experience extremely well, one being horror and the other being absurdist comedy.

Savage Worlds. I'll be the first to admit I suck at processing a massive amount of rules, so I like the simplicity. It's also ridiculously flexible, I've run anything from fantasy to high school slice of life on it.

silcore or most commonly known for the heavy gear setting.

I like its core roll of keep highest. making sure results are never outside of the dice range by much. most of game mechanics are there for when they impact the game. and I like the way it integrates vehicle and humans in the same place.

Those two things you mentioned seem to be the biggest problems with the last people I played Mutants and Masterminds with.

I love the system, but how do I convince people not to throw a fit over the damage system?

That depends on their problem with the damage system, honestly. What, exactly, was it?

Amazing mixture of Fantasy and Tech, exquisite sandbox elements, and since its on Earth, you can have it take place in your home town. The ruleset is complex so you feel smart just for knowing how everything works, and you learn new stuff about the game all the time. Some rules are vague enough to make room for homebrew rules, making every campaign unique.

Dungeons the dragoning 40k

I like crunch, after having played it for a long time as a GM I can say it has the best crunch and tools for making real the premise of "you can play anything"

For other games it is more matter of the people I've played with and the fun I've had with them than the games themselves

The name makes it sound like a meme system for beer and pretzels.

Is this an accurate assumption.

wait monsterhearts is a game? I thought it was a comic

it isn't, while it certainly and without shame is a mash up of all the games that you know, it is done with the upmost love and, as I've said, has the best crunch I've seen in any tabletop rpg

1d4chan.org/wiki/Dungeons:_the_Dragoning_40,000_7th_Edition

WoD because it attempts to be serious and focuses on horror and investigation rather than just setting the players loose with a mandate to try to kill everything, but does all of better than Call of Cthulhu.

Dh 1st edition
It's high lethality and other bullshit

The One Ring
Reasons are many
>I'm a Tolkien enthusiast and really no other work of fantasy is even close to being so captivating
>It's more of a low-fantasy, down to earth game, where PCs, while for sure being heroic warriors destined of great deeds, are nowhere wuxia/capeshit BS like in your average fantasy game. Nor the world is full of over-the-top crap, but a untamed wilderness full of striving insular communities. Nor the magic is flashy fireworks but mysterious, and often scary force. I like that much better than average high fantasy kitchen sink.
>Moreover setting is vaguely iron age/germanic heroic age/dark ages which in my opinion is much better suited for fantasy genre than typical late medieval/early renaissance flick
>It is simple, rules lite game. Somewhere between conventional RPG and a "storygame", but still closer to the former. yet despite it, it's so much fun, with all the options and abilities, despite their simplicity using them and throwing some dice for fun is so much more fun than dabbling it tons of contrived and convoluted terms, builds and shit over a grid map with minis, stealing precious session time for lenghty and boring combat sequences.
>Moreover the mechanics fit the setting like a glove, underlining and highlighting the major themes of Tolkien's writings.

While I have some minor complaints, only major one would be that Tolkien's world is, ultimately, rather limited in cintent and themes it can do, and the degree to which the system is tailored towards them makes it unflexible and virtually pointless in trying to refluff to something else if I would fancy doing something else for once.

I love the setting of Delta Green and all the short stories that I was able to find on the internet, but the actual rules of the game look like absolute dogshit.

However I hear there's a new edition? Is it any better? Where can I get more Delta Green stories...

From what I remember they said it was too swingy thanks to the d20, either feeling like they're doing nothing or one shotting the enemy.

But I had three other players constantly bitch about not understanding the Damage, despite me both explaining to them twice and all three having access to the handbook and the SRD.

Maybe my previous players are just assholes.

>one-shotting
>in a system with rules for basic enemies that amount to, "if it takes an injury from anywhere, it's dead/incapped"
It is to laugh. The best thing I can tell you in regards to this is, the rules for save, score, etc maximums by power level are just guidelines when it comes to enemy NPCs. Don't be afraid to just straight-up disregard to make the enemies actually dangerous to your players, or to give them things that make them seemingly crazy. Things like using Immunity and Limited to make them take half damage from the primary damage source(between lethal and non-lethal) that the party uses.

For the other three, the only thing I can say is: write it on a notecard. I have a minor learning disability, so some things are hard to keep straight, and my brain tends to sabotage itself more often than not and that's what I did.

Wait a second, I thought sorcerers got their magic from external devices like staffs, enchanted swords, rings, ect, while wizards channel from within. Even if they use "books or learning" they have to draw on it from somewhere.

Funny thing is, in Germany, warlock, sorcerer/-ess and wizard all translate into "Zauberer". Germans don´t see any difference... "you can cast spells, then you´re a Zauberer."

Where the hell are you getting that from?

I think it's about D&D where sorcerers' magic comes from their own, magically-active, heritage

GURPS is simple,
GURPS is complex,
GURPS is what fits,
GURPS is best.

I could never get into GURPS. What is the current edition?

Ironclaw because its my magical realm.

Also its good if you like extremely deadly combat rules that force players to take the threat of injury seriously.

I like BECMI because it's simple enough for my wife to understand and we can play together.

Apocolypse world for the fact the players make the world from the ground up.

Dnd 5e, for the fact that's its easy to get a good group of people who are awesome, easy to leave when its not, and simple enough to drink and have fun.

>extremely deadly combat rules that force players to take the threat of injury seriously.

Tell me more.

There is no HP as such in Ironclaw, instead you just have certain degrees of damage shown in pic related.

While attacks do have tons of layers of rolls to go through or else they do literally nothing, when they do its serious business.

For instance, any random mook with a knife could potentially kill you in 2 hits. Since a regular stab that does the full amount of damage would do 2 points of damage, if he manages to do it again then that is 3 points because being hurt means you take 1 extra, resulting in you dying right then and there.

And that is one of the weakest weapons there is, a pistol will do 5 points of damage outright if not reduced.

Actually, I just checked and a pistol does 6 damage if you succeed on one of your two attack dice and 12 if you succeed on both.

Reminder that harm doesn't stack across attacks. An attack that does 3 damage to a hurt and scared enemy will only injure them.

That's not to say that a greatsword WON'T ruin your day, but it's not quite at that level.

Also, 2 dice to attack assumes no bonuses and a career that doesn't apply.

Well shit, I guess that seems more reasonable.

Its like he is trying to convince himself

Dungeon World.

It's pretty much objectively one of the best currently out there. It has fast easy to use mechsnics and is perfect for beginners, it's a lot cheaper than most of these other rules bloated systems that cost fifty dollars. There is no reason for extra rules when it is he role playing that matters. Dungeon World is fast and innovative and still feels exactly like the spirit of ADND before DnD 3.5 destroyed the hobby and ruined a generation of role players.

You want fast, intuitive combat? Dungeon World does that.

You want real, deep roleplaying mechanics? Dungeon World does that.

You want great mechanics that reward diversity of play? Dungeon World does that as well.

My last session of Dungeon World my human fighter wrapped a vampire in a bear hug and wrestled him out a window. This is real roleplaying we are talking about here, not babby 3.5 shit. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Dungeon World today, it is an evolution and perfection of the half-formed ideas in Apocalypse World (the game it is derived from)

>Apocolypse world for the fact the players make the world from the ground up.

Thats not how it works you idiot. Reread the rules.

>Star Wars D6
Mainly I fucking love Star Wars, but I greatly prefer this over D20 Star Wars (3e dumpster fire) and FFG's game (weird narrative mechanics). WEG's system is super simple for chargen and gameplay and I like the way that skills build on top of stats. It's overall a tight and well designed game that captures Star Wars well. There's also a shitload supplements with new content and adventures that suprisingly don't suck.

>FantasyCraft
It's rules heavy fantasy with so many mechanics that all work together so well. All of the aspects of the game just feel so stand out to me with an interesting class system, a feat system that is simple and actually worthwhile, diverse weapon options, a detailed but functional combat system, and excellent tools for creating monsters and running a game. I have such a hard on for this game. Especially after playing Pathfinder for years it's amazing to have something that fixes every single problem I had with 3e and then some.

>Basic D&D
Rules light fantasy with just enough mechanics to run well. This is my go to game for noobs who've never played RPGs but still want to "play D&D."

>GURPS
It's a game where you can do anything and it works fucking flawlessly.

Dungeon World is only good compared to the one game you explicitly bring up in your post - 3.5e. Otherwise it's pretty shit.

The new delta green rules clean up a lot of things people disliked about 6th edition CoC. They changed a lot of the damage mechanics and streamlined the combat, made the sanity system a lot better (no random rolling to become a nymphomaniac when you take a temperary,) and added just a lot of polish in general.

Unfortunately, we only have what amounts to a phb right now, and no clear indication of when the core fucking book is coming out.

it's a game, there's a thread about it here

You can drink and have fun with absolutely any system, user.

4e

The mechanics were never the biggest hurdle to get into L5R.

The Runed Age because I'm autistic about magic and it's got an awesome chargen.

To the pic:
Wizards are the nerds who learn to have the best grades.
Sorcerers are born with massive talents and sleep through class.
Warlocks blow the teacher for a passing great

1. GURPS - rules work well and can do my favored "weird history" and fantasy settings great and lets you play all kinds of neat stuff without breaking the game too much.

2. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e - this is my gamefu and not even sure I can say why. I just love it to death, even with the flaws. I love the presentation of the setting and the quick flowing rules and ease of play.

3. Maybe 4e D&D, but Barbarians of Lemuria looks pretty hot but I haven't got to play it yet, reading it gives the potential to take the #3 spot. 4e D&D I like the gamist rules and balance, makes a very enjoyable experience for the game it is. BoL for the sheer simplicity and narrative aspects.

Also my favorite are
OWod ( Dark Ages is best here)
L5r
Degenesis

I like political games and worlds with a lot of lore
DSA is coming close but I haven't had a game in a while.

Also Pathfinder for number crunching and turning off the brain.

Changeling the Lost. Mostly because making a local setting is easy as fuck, it's rules are easy enough and as a GM you can easily fuck with the players in a number of ways.

fiasco, because it's so low-pressure and rules-light and yet every time i've played it it's created an absolutely perfect self-contained story

GURPS, because it does a ton of settings fantastically, but generally has a gritty, realistic feel to it, which I enjoy my games to have. We run historical fiction (current: migration-period slavs), low fantasy, and hard sci-fi, but you can do more cinematic things too.

Burning Wheel: great if you don't want all the granularity of GURPS, and in return, better narrative. Pretty much only used it for a ASOIAF game (that's been going for 6 years) though.