My TTRPG group wants to try a new system, and they have no preference

My TTRPG group wants to try a new system, and they have no preference.

Sell me on your favorite system, Veeky Forums

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first for gurps. universal, can do anything almost well. easy to get into, tons of splats, lots of userbase.

how does gurps stack up against fate?

This is going to be weird, because first I'll start with why I love it, and then I'll give you a boatload of reasons not to play it.

Legends of the Wulin is a truly unique game. A Wuxia game (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon shit) with an extremely unusual set of design principles, combining a level of crunch, depth and detail with more narrative and story focused ideas. Usually, narrative design and crunch are considered opposites, but the game brings them together in a very novel way.

The best example of this is the combat system. Fights in LotW are great. They're mechanically engaging, with your mix of Kung fu styles interacting with your opponents in surprising and enjoyable ways, and they're also strongly narratively driven. Your ideals and beliefs, what your character cares about and why they're fighting, all these things can be just as important as the weapon in your hand. This even carries over to the damage system. Winning a fight might not mean killing your opponent- Conveying your sincerity through the clash of blades to win them over to your side, proving your skill and impressing them or even just coming to a greater mutual understanding are all perfectly valid consequences of a fight, and the system mechanically supports all of them just as much as injuring or killing a bad guy, giving them real mechanical weight in the system.

There's a lot more I could say... But now I need to get on to the downsides.

The first thing to say is that LotW is a very atypical system. It does a lot of things differently, meaning assumptions you've learned from other roleplaying games can trip you up, and things can seem very unintuitive until you grasp the systems internal logic. Even simple things like the idea of rolling dice first, declaring actions second can trip people up.

This is made oh so much goddamn worse by the terrible editing of the core book. I cannot stress this enough. For all the love I have for this game, it is oh so much harder to actually learn to play than it has any right to be. Internal contradictions, rules buried in the middle of fluff paragraphs or only stated offhand in an unrelated section, important rules not being explicitly said fucking anywhere in the book, and instead needing to be divined from implications and extrapolations... It's absolutely fucking appalling.

The system also has some core balance issues. Some Kung fu styles are way too strong or too weak, some things are really inconsistent, and there's a few insidious mechanical bugs that you notice more and more as you play the game. There's a fan made supplement, the Half Burnt Manual, which makes a good go at improving a lot of these, but even with that there's a lot of issues.

I love LotW, but that's why I think it's important to be honest about it. If you like the sound of it, then you might want to persevere in trying to learn it, there's a few people around on Veeky Forums, a IRC channel and a Discord server I'm aware of that are dedicated to it who can help explain some of its more twisted concepts and help clarify how it's meant to work, but even with a guide it isn't an easy road.

It also isn't a system for everybody. I've seen it rejected from both 'sides', narrative storygame lovers turned off by the crunch, and crunchy groups turned off by the narrative aspects.

Still, if you think you fit in that section of the venn diagram and are willing to get ready for an arduous journey into deciphering the ancient Kung fu manual that is the rulebook, I promise you it'll be a game experience unlike anything you've ever played.

Pathfinder. It's got the most content of any game, and causes massive butthurt in really insufferable people.

Not him, but it's got more potential breadth and scales better.

If you do try it, start with GURPS lite for the players (free PDF) and GURPS basic set for the GM. Then add options... sparingly and one at a time. There's a dungeon fantasy boxed set coming out if you want to start with that.

GURPS general thread is a good place to start. People there are very helpful. Also the op of that thread has a ton of links in a big PDF.

Whichever you choose ,have fun!

>t's got more potential breadth and scales better.

Could you expand on that? Both are super broad, open generic systems. I find it hard to see how one is harder than the other, and the scalable nature of the FATE fractal makes it seem like it'd scale better than GURPs's hard and fast rules for everything.

Unless op is very new to the hobby, 3.x is probably already under his belt.

Though that's a good question. I prefer GURPS for everything but for other anons you should probably tell us all what your group already plays.

Eh. Find me a system where your Intelligence doesn't have a say in how good you are at running and jumping, instead.

Anyone have any experience with 7th Age?

Do you mean 7th Sea, 13th Age or a new game with a title that is just going to get annoying and confusing?

I'm retarded, sorry. 7th Sea. I have no idea where I got 7th Age from.

Scales in terms of size, using the ssr table. A guy in a sneak suit can fight a 30 ton Mecha and the game engine already has most of the issues solved.

Scales in terms of setting material. If you have a power or advantage that stems from one source (say, cybernetics) and want something that has the same effect but is psi or chi or magic, then you just change the power modifier. Or create a new one and all published material is compatible. It also means that a Jedi, a bladesinger, an Android, and a modern horror vampire can have a four way fight and everything works.

Scales by power level. GURPS handles massive bonuses and penalties very cleanly. In the middle range, they change your chance of success mostly. But gradually that changes and by the time you're at the ends of the table, it's mostly changing your likelihood of critical.

There are lots of GM tools to change the feel of a game. So you can customize the campaign so your mechanics support a certain playstyle, campaign style, setting, or genre conventions.

With GURPS and FATE and WoD and many other systems, a GM can wing it with a tough interaction and you get scalability that way. But with GURPS, you don't have to wing it if you don't want to.

All of that scaling is entirely doable in FATE, though. Arguably easier, since it's an abstract narrative system where you can just use the various levels of the fractal or different flavour of the game elements to represent and interact with all of those.

How many books do you want to use to numerate the elements of the setting?

This a legit and actually dead serious, probably tragic, character playbook in Monsterhearts.

Savage Worlds has die rolls that legit have everyone cheering at the table, and has rules for so many things while still being incredibly simple. It's also generic and out of the box customizable so that you can throw any rule out you don't like. You can do that last one with any game but it's refreshing to be encouraged to by the book.

B/X D&D. It's simple, it's straightforward enough, most people have roots in it so it's easy to teach (even if they only have roots in its mechanics through latter, diluted games, most people understand rolling d20s, Armor Class, and the terminologies that are pervasive in the hobby). A slight grasp of the system, or one of the countless clones, can let you play any genre you want without being bogged down or clumsy, though it's always going to be bent towards dungeon-crawling in some way, shape, or form.

That said, 'dungeon-crawling' is a really open term, and might mean 'exploring a post-apocalyptic street' or 'a spaceship or a planet' or something weirder still.

Dogs in the Vineyard. It's a very unique game in a very different setting.

Essentially you play wandering paladins in pre-statehood Utah. The primary focus of the game is solving interpersonal conflicts in the towns you visit. People sin, this leads to demonic attack, which can lead to cults, murder, etc. It's your job to save the branch (town) you go to and sometimes that involves cutting off a limb.

The players are considered to have absolute morale authority in the setting. They can enter a town shoot the steward (mayor/priest) as a sinner, point at a random someone declare them the steward, and declare everyone is required to marry their cousins and by the laws of the church that is now doctrine in that particular branch.

The game explicitly tells you as the GM you are in no position to pass judgement on how the players play their characters. So if your players want to be turbo murderhobos they can, but that isn't going to make for a very interesting game.

Its a paradigm shift for both players and GMs. As the GM you push the players towards the situation, so it tells you to "say yes, or roll the dice" meaning you avoid alot of unnecessary dice rolls and checks for shit that doesn't matter. The players also have a massive amount of agency and you have to keep the scale of their stakes lower.

Conflicts can be anything from talking, to overcoming stage fright, to tracking someone over several days, to gunfighting, it covers everything. They're resovled by rolling your dice then bidding and calling with them.

All in all, great game, would recomend.

Mutant: Undergångens Arvtagare.
Not really happening unless you learn Swedish.

My brother in the King of Life.

Only thing I would warn someone: a) conflicts CAN be a little counterintuitve at first b) play it with friends, you WILL take stands about the people and you WILL use your ideas.

>I find kinda interesting that Baker did this around the time he did Poison'd, but you know what? Actually makes totally sense, having played both.

That sounds pretty fucking cool, actually. Do you have the rulebook by any chance?

...

img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1366/48/1366481737053.pdf

Older edition, same rules, perhaps an example or two less.

GURPS is more crunchy while FATE is more handwavey. GURPS uses rules for solving situations, FATE uses feelings. They are nothing alike - in fact, they're polar opposites in their approach to how rgps are played.

That doesn't contradict my point, though, and it also misrepresents FATE. That it uses broad, abstract narrative mechanics to solve problems doesn't make them any less rules than what GURPS has.

In GURPS the rules are the physics of the game world, in FATE the rules are the physics of the game narrative. Those are two completely opposite approaches to gaming.

And that's still entirely irrelevant to the initial point.

My group uses Savage Worlds. Here are the demo rules as a pdf to get a taste. Lots of exploding dice, hit locations without complexity, wounds that last more than five minutes. Pretty good.

those rules still have guts as a skill

It was the latest test drive I could find that was without a setting.

So? What do I care for the initial point.

Now a few people in my group have had some issues with the actual setting. IE women can be beaten freely, polygamy, etc. And playin a religious fanatic is tough for some people, but it's a roleplaying game, you play a role.

Some games like DitV, CoC and WoD/CoD you want to make sure you've filtered the edgelords out first before you play it. Nothing ruins immersion more than "I'm gonna pee on the corpses" or "I'll use my cock to shut the bitch up" in a serious story where there are actual things at stake.

I've heard DitV can be hacked into a different setting without too much difficulty that could let you play as D&D Paladins, Imperial Inquisitors or even SS agents. I haven't played the game though, so take that with a grain of salt.

For real, a game where the party are SS agents or something investigating internal corruption would be goddamn brutal. Like you hate your government and your country but if you do anything to sabotage the war effort you're putting German citizens in danger. Do you defy orders to hide the refugees who you KNOW aren't guilty of anything? If you report the saboteur he and his family will be tortured to death, but if you don't then it's one of your buddies on the frontline being given faulty equipment.

I thought about running this game. The setting and plot is great, but the actual mechanics of the system are fucking retarded. I ended up running an episodic campaign with a similar plot in a different system.

That's interesting, because I feel like the mechanics are incredibly strong. When I run games though it's usually next to no rolls for the first 3/4ths of the session while the players are gathering information. Then they come up with a plan of action then they enact it and that's where the conflicts are. To have a single system to do everything from fear checks, to fist fighting, to shooting a silver dollar out of the air, to attempting to track some bandits is brilliant. I admit on "simple checks" it's dumb because it can be a longer affair for something basic, but that's where you as the GM pick when a conflict is appropriate.

More along the lines of
>this woman lost her husband 3 months ago and refuses to take gentleman callers, straighten her out.

I've played in an L5R game run using DitV where we were a group of samurai hunting out sedition by order of the Shogun and that worked great. And I'm working on a version that's post apocalyptic Rangers wandering the ruins trying to maintain what's left of civilization which I hope will be fun.

MonsterHearts is a fantastic system for doing social drama in general and also has some of my favourite class design.

Strike! is simple, easy to learn, fast, and pretty damn fun if you don't mind the approach it has to simulationism (which is giving 0 fucks about it). It's sorta weird to say, but basically it's a pretty comfy game. Is one of the best tactical combat systems in RPGs I know of. Also very flexible with a bunch of modules.

On the negatives, the core book is badly edited and the writer is dealing with IRL shit that is topping him from updating it. Still pretty much my favorite game to play/GM.

Shadow of the Demon Lord is a pretty damn good system for running a darker style of fantasy game. There are lots of possible class combinations, like over 2,000 possible ones due to there being three tiers of character class. You can be any of the standard races, except for elves, as well as Changelings and Clockworks.

Basic mechanics are pretty easy, revolving around Boons and Banes. A boon is a d6 you add to a d20 roll, and a Bane is the same but subtracting. Boons and Banes cancel each other out, so it's pretty fluid. All you need to play it are a d20 and some d6s.

It feels pretty damn gritty.

Requires a certain type of player, tho.

If you're into messy supernatural teen drama, it's an amazing system with tons of mechanics to create fun conflicts.

If your players can't handle any mention of "queer" or "erotic" content, you're gonna have a bad time.

My favorite system? Boy, that's difficult. My group plays different systems regularly, and they are all so fun. I've had the most succes with Airship Pirates. Whilst the system itself is alright (and the production quality is lacking, like my softcover splat that was falling apart the second time I opened it), and it has it's quirks, it's fun. And my players haven't had that much fun in a while.

Memorable quotes, acoording to my players:
>No, you do not see a Caviar-R-Us anywhere. It must be a struggling franchise.

>It's very hard to inconspicuously wield a side table.

Been playing Dragon Age's system recently. System is okay, DnDesque with a few differences. Setting around said theme though is fantastic if you're familiar at all.

Or Mouse Guard. Instead of players vs enemies it's heavy players vs environment. Really fun from a DM perspective as you can take the most basic things and turn them into challenges. Fallen over tree? Literally a cliffside to them. Small river? Roaring rapids. Field of grass? Spiders waiting to pounce galore.

>Strike
It's shit, don't bother.

Try GURPS, Runequest, Dark Heresy, Star Wars D6, FATE or Battletech.

Why is it shit?

>can do anything almost well
And this is exactly the problem with GURPS.

Do you like Mega Man? Of course you do.

Hey kid, you like Heavy Metal? Seriously, if you go nuts with this it turns into Brutal Legend's more hardcore brother. Lemme get some pasta typed up.

But what if I liked the most popular spinoff better? And Star Force.

It's got rules for that too.

This is my honest to god opinion and not shilling: Strike! with very few tweaks would be fucking perfect for a Battlenetwork inspired game.

I once had that discussion with theStrike!user. He also believed that Strike would do well with battle network, but Savage Worlds is good if you want Theater of the Mind. Personally, I do it and just limit how much the dice can explode based on character tier to keep things reasonable.

I'm also curious.

I've been thinking about using it for a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon campaign. The mechanics seem very well suited for Pokemon, Digimon, etc. Fun tactical mechanics, but none of the excessive math and charts that most Pokemon tabletop systems are known for.

Haven't actually read it yet, I'm interested in hearing some more opinions.

It doesn't have anything making it good.
It's built around 4E's power system, but doesn't do anything with it.
It's too rules-heavy for a simple narrative focused game.
The rules are too shit for a gamist system.

I feel it fits for a lot of reasons:
- 2 step character building makes it really good at creating an operator/Navi duo
- game flow is largely set up to do similar kind of plots and keep the action flowing
- the combat system is gamey, grid based and requires teamwork
- the at-will/encounter setup for powers makes them work really well as chips
- the classes slot in nicely with navi/chip sub-types
- the roles work really well as elemental analogues (but leaving the option open for off-element/role combinations), and elemnts are supported in general
- feats are pretty analogous with navi-cust
- already has sort of an obsession with terrain effects
- there are team techs
- multiply damage/HP numbers by 10 and you are in the same ballpark as the games

There's probably more stuff but that's it off the top of my head.

>It doesn't have anything making it good.

It has the best tactical combat system. It's fast and simple.

>It's built around 4E's power system, but doesn't do anything with it.

It does 4e-like fights?

>It's too rules-heavy for a simple narrative focused game.

Only for tactical combat and if you keep adding modules. It's less rules heavy than FAE, otherwise.

>The rules are too shit for a gamist system.

Why?

Honestly using power systems for Pokemon is no bad idea, but I'd still recommend modding 4E rather than using strike. 4E understands the math it's using.

Also, an fyi:
There's a dedicated autist shilling Strike here, up until a few weeks ago he even kept posting some marketing pdf with links to buy the game in it. So take pro-Strike posting with a grain of salt.

>4E understands the math it's using.

Okay, seriously wat? Where is Strike math screwed up?

4E fights worked because they were a framework and obstacle to test your team-combos against.
Strikes rules lack - either due to lacking content or because it aimed more for simplicity - the design space to do that unless you throw out all the content and write it yourself, and even that will be difficult because the math at the core is very narrowly calculated.

You keep making claims that are too generic for me to understand what specifically you have issues with.

Strike! has less content than 4e, yes, and because it can't really operate with stacking +/- modifiers the design space is more constrained. This is true.

But even between these constraints, it still covers more than enough. I can't think of many things it can't replicate from 4e (and considering the staggering amount of material from 4e, that's a huge fucking feat), and because of its simplicity, homebrewing is very much encouraged (just as you imply).

If you want to list something specific from 4e you feel is missing I could try to explain what sort of analogue Strike! has for it, or how you could homebrew it (I got lots of homebrew ideas as well).

Have you seen a running retarded person?

>But even between these constraints, it still covers more than enough
Not if you want it to be carried by the combat system.
And as there's literally nothing worthwhile in Strike besides the combat, cutting these things was a stupid idea.

4E combat was an optimization puzzle. The modifiers, opportunity costs of the power system, statuses and class dynamics were building blocks you used to 'solve' the arena-like encounters. Strike replicates the trappings of the system without replicating the things you actually have to optimize. It's like doing Olympic High Jump, but without a bar. So what is left is a system that offers very little depth for the amount of focus spent on it and forces you into narrative concessions that work only for niche settings.

Alright motherfucker. You want elves and dragons and dwarves and orcs? We got that shit. You want dwarves but they hoard magic? We got that too. Driders? Half-giant Vikings? Minotaurs? The Predator? Lizardmen? Space angels? Psionic plant greys? Got them all. Can play all of them but the dragon, too, plus extra.

How about some classes? Got 34 of those. Assassin clowns? Why the fuck not. Guys who have dedicated their lives to bringing together and mastering two diametrically opposing martial arts schools? Sounds good. Literal rockstar turbo-bards? What's a metal-inspired game without them? Necromancers who can claim the abilities of the undead or demons by slaying them and stealing their essence? What do you think our liches are?

And we got some neither-class-nor-race-but-a-combination-of-both's, too. Seven of them, ranging from vampires to guys whose whole power set is based around telling magic to fuck off to shapeshifters to guys who can steal souls and the abilities thereof.

And if that weren't enough you can get some mutations as well. Firebreathing dog-people? Go for it. Four-armed jungle tribesman with the ability (if not yet the power points) to lob his enemies 1000 years through time? If you can spare the points, go for it.

And I'm not even going to get into some of the nuttier parts of the setting, like the battlestation lurking in the depths of the solar system that makes the Death Star look like a tennis ball with a laser pointer stuck in it, or the moon that was enchanted to spew UV radiation over the planet, and so had to be sealed away for most of the year.

This whole damn game is a Gloryhammer album cover in the making.

I don't know how good I am at this whole shilling thing

This is a perfectly reasonable SenZar campaign outline:

He seeks the Ultimate Chords, which together will form the Primeval Riff, which will allow him to bend the world to his will. The ancient lich-lords known only as the Metalwrights discovered them eons ago, and, fearing that they may be used against them, secreted them away beneath their mighty volcanic fortress. When at last the Metalwrights were brought low, they were flung screaming into the depths of the volcano, taking with them the knowledge of the Primeval Riff they had tried so desperately to play in those final moments. And there it has lain for these eons past.

This is the sort of shit that can end up with your Spellsinger engaging in a rock-off with a thousand-year-old lich lord in the crater of a dormant volcano while the rest of the party holds his skeletal army at bay, and the druid-analogue debates whether or not to summon an eruption from the earth below you, and risk setting off the whole range, only to ultimately decide that things look grim enough, so you have to duel the remnants of the army's elite while a rain of fire and rock plummets around you and the power of metal crackles through the air as the guitar duel reaches a fever pitch.

Like that Metalocalypse guitar duel. But with more volcanoes and skeletons.

>Strike replicates the trappings of the system without replicating the things you actually have to optimize.

I'm sorry, I know I'm a broken record but please give me a specific example.

I think I get what you are saying but I do not want to assume. Are you missing modifier stacking? Is the number of active powers too low?

How is Through the Breach?

Judging from your autistic failure to understand basic points and your reddit spacing I'm judging you're the Strike user. How about you fuck off and shill your game somewhere else?

How about you answer my fucking question instead of calling everyone who likes a game you dislike a shill?

Forrest Gump

m8 I already answered your question, read my fucking post. Why are you shilling this game so hard anyway? Are you the dev and want to sell it or is it just your personal little crusade?

I would appreciate some specific examples to illustrate Strike!'s flaws. I'm not interested in playing the system myself, but I am interested in learning more about its design, and this more concrete information would be useful to people who are considering running or playing Strike!.

(I'm not a fan of RPG combat systems that serve as a puzzle and mechanical challenge. If my combat system is going to be detailed, I'd rather it be a cool fight scene generator like that of Legends Of The Wulin.)

>m8 I already answered your question, read my fucking post.

You did not. You keep dodging by making more and more vague statements. You won't even let me narrow it down for you FFS.

>Why are you shilling this game so hard anyway?

Because it's a small, obscure indie game that I like? Why the fuck wouldn't I recommend it?

> Are you the dev and want to sell it

It's be pretty fucking stupid of me to do that on Veeky Forums, when Veeky Forums has repositories for every single RPG under the sun. You can find a download pack for the game in about 5 seconds if you search 4plebs. I scrubbed some of the goddamn things myself.

>obscure
Maybe on the internet at large, but not here.

The One Ring
>Well known settings even normies like though, have to admit, most people don't understand the actual feel of the setting and this game is heavily dependent on it
>Captures Tolkien's prose feel and themes very accurately, both through mechanics and expanded fluff
>More about said fluff, it fills the blanks within a certain region of Middle Earth (Wildreland) enriching it greatly with material, offering deep lore and many plothooks that are so fitting that possibly could have been invented by Tolkien himself.
>Simple and very intuitive yet fun and fulfilling task resolution
>Low-magic, so characters have to deal with challenges with their wits, courage and hard-earned skills rather than magical handwaving.
>Rules lite, easy to learn, yet the gameplay is still fun. The "undemanding, simple, boardgamey fun" rather than numbercrunching system-mastery gamism fun, but that makes it even better
>Some mechanics that support the narrative
>Much, much lesser focus on combat than most RPGs
>While you can play with "optimization" to a degree, the gains from it aren't that much and basically any character that you can concieve and makes sense through in-universe perspective will be playable and competent
>Any flaws that the game has can be easily houseruled without breaking the game.

>You did not. You keep dodging by making more and more vague statements. You won't even let me narrow it down for you FFS.
so sue me

>Because it's a small, obscure indie game that I like? Why the fuck wouldn't I recommend it?
The reason for people not playing your game is not that it is obscure or lacks exposure.
The reason for people not playing your game is, that your game is an unfocused mess of badly though through plagiarism and meaningless buzzwords, that does literally nothing better than the systems it mimics.

Also, look at the user that recommended Legends of the Wulin. He actually formulated what the system does, what implications this produces for play and what downsides might turn you of the game. That's a recommendation.

You show up in every system-thread and post something like
>Strike is fast™ and fun™, and it's just like 4E but more simple™
that's being a autist/shill.

>so sue me

I don't want to sue you, I want to understand wtf your actual problem is.

>The reason for people not playing your game is, that your game is an unfocused mess of badly though through plagiarism and meaningless buzzwords, that does literally nothing better than the systems it mimics.

This very well could be the case, but I'm not seeing these faults, and you keep refusing to expand upon them.

>Also, look at the user that recommended Legends of the Wulin. He actually formulated what the system does, what implications this produces for play and what downsides might turn you of the game. That's a recommendation.

Sometimes I have the time and the drive for that, sometimes I don't. I don't want to do a pasta because that'll be just met with "oh no, shilling!", but I also don't want to type out why I recommend Strike again and again and again...

Then again, if that's all you got, I may as well.

As for the downsides, I usually try to mention that: the rulebook is amateur-ish, it's not even attempting to be realistic/simulationist, it expects you to match up fluff and mechanics, and it uses gamey grid based tactical combat, which is an acquired taste. Maybe you could add core system being too simplistic to that, and possibly that growth is more horizontal than vertical (which doesn't lend itself well to "from hero to zero" stories), but the rules modules and ease of brewing make those non-issues.

>You show up in every system-thread and post something like

Not _every_ system thread, only when I think it fits.

Second. This is the basics of character creation.

Anything that is d100 based. It's so simple that anyone can read their success chance immediately.

>b-but muh d20
>b-but unneeded granularity
fuck off, rolling a d100 isnt more complicated than rolling a d20

This is weird.

You point out both of the most common complaints/problems of the d100, say they don't matter without explaining why, then don't actually give any reasons why a d100 is good aside from somehow being a d100 is inherently good apparently?

Tell me where to get this book then, I've actually been looking for a system to run a Brutal Legend RPG

this sounds amazing

this sounds hilarious lol

Has anyone played 7th Sea or Numenera?

TECHNICALLY the queer content isn't totally necessary (tough honestly I think Avery shouldn't have pointed out that).
The sexual is perhaps more important than fighting in DND in a way. Seriously. You don't really have that much sex in the game in my experience, but it's kinda always there. Like it should, all considered.

I think that most (well, 50%) of roleplayers could handel that, and you can probably get who can and cannot but...

Let me use a metaphor: this game is clearly dramatical and there are tons of people tha enjoy it, emotionally speaking, isn't a walk in the woods. It's like going into a desert island and hoping you can manage to get trough hurricanes, drought, eartquakes, hostile islanders and whatnot. Group needs to be where this is going.

If need more trust than most games - but in the end the result is difficult to emulate. I think I had NIGHTMARES about my character (to be fair there really are no brakes on the Infernal skin, it's probably the most unsafe one). Honestly the only thing we didn't do was crying at the table.

Couldn't suggest it more, but check out your travel companions and luggage before embarking.

>also, Selkie a cute. CUTE!

I played 7th Sea with some friends. Can't say I was blown away by it. The setting is nice, but I find the raise system very unintuitive and difficult to explain around. The players didn't enjoy it as much either, as a lot of their actions seemed to come down to 'spend a point to win'

Possibly this was all due to my running of the game, but who knows....

The setting seems a little cliche, but open-ended enough to allow the players to be able to do what they want.

I like it. Its familiar & intuitive enough that the players didn't get completely lost in the narration, but still has a bit of fantasy to it to keep them on their toes.

Try Apocalypse World.
Pros
>Low GM prep
>High narrative value
>Easy to learn and play
>Players actions mechanically created in a way that keeps the action constantly moving
>Teaches you plenty of transferable skills for GMing
>Plenty of spin-off 'hacks'

Cons
>Fixed difficulty meaning that every roll is pretty much the same (2d6+stat, 7-9 for minor success, 10+ for regular success)
>Highly Narrativist (some people understandably prefer more crunch)
>Players are rather constricted by the class or 'playbook' they choose for their character
>One of the 'hacks' is Dungeon World

What's the problem with Dungeon World?

If I wanted to play DnD I'd fucking play DnD.

Oh. Well, so I suppose there's nothing wrong with playing Dungeon World if I don't want to play D&D.

Has anyone here tried Symbaroum? I've been looking at it recently but I always have a hard time telling if a system is good just from reading it

Don't Rest Your Head. You're an insomniac who has stayed awake so long you can see an alternate dimension called the Mad City. Fight nightmare creatures and stay alive (and awake) while learning to control your Madness, which manifests as a superpower that drives you insane if you risk too much of it.

Character creation is mostly coming up with your concept. Your stats are dead simple, one mundane Exhaustion skill that you're better at than most people (like Running or Boxing), one Madness skill which is your weird superpower (like Ants or Taxi or Frog), and three points divided between Fight and Flight (how you react when shit hits the fan). Task resolution is basically poker with d6s, and determines whether you succeed or fail as well as indicating whether things are getting more or less chaotic or crazy or tiring for your character. Rolling fewer dice makes you less likely to succeed at what you're doing, but having too many dice can drive you to exhaustion or even unconsciousness (and death), or it can make you go totally insane and turn into a Nightmare like the rest of the Mad City.

Run a one-shot, see if your group likes it. I ran a short 10-session campaign with it, 5 hour sessions, and my group loved it. It's my favourite horror system by far because player characters because it's not afraid to let the PCs be powerful if they're willing to accept risks and consequences for doing so.

It's dead simple but not very well balanced. Many stats are clearly, demonstratively better than others. Every magician MUST have Resolute 15, and everyone else needs at least a 10 or they're going to immediately succumb to corruption. A Strong of 9 is functionally identical to a Strong of 10 for both Toughness and Pain Threshold, so if you're not going for high Strong you might as well put a 9. Accurate, as I'll explain, is worthless.

Some special abilities are nearly worthless, while others are almost mandatory picks for a Warrior / Rogue / Mage. For example, Holy Aura at Adept rank does constant damage to nearby corrupted enemies (so most of them) AND heals the whole party which makes it insanely good compared to Lay on Hands. Iron Fist lets you, for the low price of one Ability point or 10 XP, completely dump your Accurate stat to 5 and use your Strong of 15 as your melee attack roll in addition to the extra Toughness and Pain Threshold. In fact, there are so many ways to use non-Accurate attributes when attacking that the Accurate stat is basically pointless for a melee fighter.

The roll-under system is fine, I guess. It's fast but you could have replaced it with 1d20 + Stat vs 21 and gotten the same exact results. Characters will never get really powerful but it's grim dark low fantasy so that's par for the course. The game isn't D&D 3E levels of game breaking imbalance but it's not my favourite fantasy system.

I'm absolutely disgusted at the basic premise of this system and think you all should be bullied and ridiculed.

Rogue trader, "oh I see you rolled a 1 to save, not only does your characters head explode, but the bone fragments of your skull fragment out and damage your allies."

Seconding SW. You can build pretty much any setting you want with the toolkits, and have rules that support a unique feel.

Nah, you should play GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. It does D&D better than D&D.

And you can buy the physical rulebook for only ten bucks

Well you seem to know your shit. Got any fantasy systems you'd recommend?