Favorite System

What's your favorite system/systems and why?

Traveller because of it's rules-lite nature and fun character generation rules.

Dungeons: the Dragoning: 40k
It has lots of different options and mechanics, with a system that is both familiar and foreign and strange enough that pretty much anything can actually happen.

Risus because it first most of the games I want to play
Fiasco for when no one wants to DM
Pbta when I want more improv and player input
Reign when I want more crunchy games

unironically 3.5
because it does the job very well, has rules for damn near any setting and scenario I want to run, and it's just so damn comfy. theoretical shenanigans aside, the only problem it has - class imbalance - is not a problem i've run into in over a decade of dming this edition. but then maybe that's because i don't run campaigns that start out by cramming a bunch of strangers with wildly differing backgrounds and alignments into a tavern and sending them off to genocide the goblins. imbalance comes up almost not at all when you run a themed game - Cleric/Paladin/Paladin/Favored Soul on holy crusade, Rogue/fighter/urban ranger/rogue banding together to deal with the foreign thieves guild forcibly muscling in and distributing strange powders to the lower classes, etc.

I honestly don't understand the hate 3.5 gets. Is this a meme or something? Can someone explain what is wrong with it?

i use 3.5 as well, we play less role play and more dungeon crawl style and it suits us fine, most others in the area play 5 and i just dont like the combat changes

Most people don't like how messy it is. Some people find value in its build flexibility. Same goes for Pathfinder.

I personally hate its convoluted and bloated ruleset, but that's exactly what people who are more mechanics oriented like about it.

GURPS 4e, I get the logic behind it so if I expect to find rules for something specific chances are they already have it, and the combat is perfect, I love how some supplements analyse analyse and take inspiration from other media.

Tri-Stat DX. Just the right amount of math, staggering amount of possible character customization

A combination of it being imbalanced and it being super popular tends to promote bad habits and misconceptions in people new to the hobby. This is less of an issue now with 5e's rise in popularity.

As to the OP question, my favorite system is 13th Age. It needs tuning, but I really enjoy the way it manages to be a primarily narrative-focused system with elements of 4e's tactical combat.

5e best e

I honestly have no clue, each time I think of a game I can only think of ways I want to change it or fix it.

I guess Risus, because it's great for easy and quick beer n' pretzels games and it revels in its highly contextual and comedic nature.

I like Ryuutama as a cute little system that at the same time isn't overly abstract or personality-driven (which can be hard to convey to certain players, especially new ones). It's notably also good at encouraging good habits in players and GMs, which I think is something that's lacking in a lot of games.

Dark heresy, because gunplay feels good.

At this point, Fate. I'm just not that into fiddling with mechanics anymore.

>i'm not into fiddling with mechanics
>therefore I choose DIY abortion of a system

Running it mostly boils down to common sense adjudication of narrative permissions.

In practice, it's not much dissimilar to running an OSR game, without the gear management.

I'm a big fan of dark heresy, both first and second editions for a great combo of atmosphere and rules that match the universe very well, also ship combat in rogue trader was some of the best I've seen. I like the ffg star wars system, but the balance is probably the worst I've seen in any game. D10 pool games feel very right from a mathematical perspective and old wod and 3rd edition l5r are boh games that I would want to play more of because of that.

Because we are in a thread where, miraculously, 3.pf can be mentioned without an immediate torrent of tism, I hope don't mind if I take this opportunity to ask a question.

For those of you who don't have any problems with 3.x is there a reason why you would play 3.5 over pathfinder? Neither have ever been my favorite system, but pathfinder just seems like a cleaner, marginally better balanced version of 3.5.

i prefer 3.5 over PF largely because I hate Paizo's guts, whereas WOTC i merely dislike. when PF was in testing, a lot of the testers on the forum got banned for voicing their opinion, they were the publishers for a lot of the more egregious 3.5 rules supplements, etc. fortunately i can implement the Unchained class fixes without paying Paizo jack shit.

I mean, now aren't all the pf books free online in the srd?

Anima Beyond Fantasy

Hero System 5th Edition.

I'd love to play GURPS sometime... I tried to DM it but it was a failure since I didn't really know the system

Maelstrom, because it's beautifully simple

Homebrew systems with funny wording and very few descriptions.

Legends of the Wulin. There's no game out there like it, and while it fails at a lot of what it attempts it gets close enough that I can bodge it into working for my own games. If another system ended up doing the same strange blend of crunch and narrativism better I'd be all for it, but currently LotW is essentially unique.

>Stars Without Number 1st Edition
I have an IRL firefly style game thats going strong.

>Lamentations of the Flame Princess
I like the simplicity. but ignore much of the grimdark.

>Genesys
I actually like how the dice work.

Fiasco. No prep, lots of roleplaying.

Dude, that shit doesn't even have playtester credits. It should be enough.

I am a whore for Fantasy Craft. It's the crunchy, modular 3.5 dream machine I've always wanted.

Have you played it? How'd it go?

>Reign
Classy gent in here

Mostly Dungeon World, but really just PbtA systems in general. DW isn't the best PbtA game, but it's the easiest to get players interested in.

Anyone have experience with Rolemaster?
What's the popular opinion of it?

Just got into Zland and I'm loving it so far.

Elegant core idea muddled by multitude of splat authors who evidently didn't get it. Char dev tediously crunchy. Have a try with HARP instead, which has a host of problems of its own, though.

II can't speak for the new edition but I played quite a few games of the original back in the day. It wasn't great. We called it "Chartmaster" for a reason. It was actually a fairly solid system, but it could be such a slog, especially in combat.

DC héroes. If you thought 3.5 had rules for every scenario, DC heroes takes it to a level where there are rules for exactly how strong celestial beings are.

Legend, because it's the closest system to what I wanted 3.5 to be once I realized it was fucking trash and broke itself in half if you tried to play it like AD&D.

4E, because the combat is a cooperative tabletop SRPG with more interesting mechanics than most SRPGs and that's more mechanically interesting than the vast majority of RPGs.

Strike! because it has enough of what I like from 4e, but does so in a massively streamlined manner.

GURPS because all possible situations are covered by the rules either explicitly or through extrapolation.

>WoD for real character roleplaying and slice of life stories
>5E for ease of use and flexibility, and for running games easily and on-the-fly
>3.PF for complexity out the ass when I want it
>misc. others for when I want some stupid bullshit

What combat changes do you dislike about 5E? Personally I've always played with flanking rules and 5ft step rules, so when our group started getting heavy into 5E we just transferred them over and kept using them. I just like them for the strategic element they add to the game without compromising the rest of the game.

FFG's Star Wars/ Genesys stuff, because I just really like the way the dice work.

5e
because it's the only one I've played so far
looking forward to trying pathfinder this summer but we're waiting on the DM to graduate from uni because he has no free tme rn

This Desu, my group and I just bastardize D&D and Gurps into our own system that we've slowly been making. We used to play D&D switched to shadowrun, but we're having the most fun with what were currently doing.

Don't play pathfinder, play some game that it's actually different from DnD so you can know how varied role-playing games can be.

5e, it was the first game I DM'd for and really just enjoy playing it.
Savage Worlds, it's a fun system to play in. Weird powers, lots of off-beat settings to play in, and just enough options not to be confusing.

my top 3 favorite systems are, in order, D&D 5e, Star Wars d20, and WoD. I know star wars d20 is basically 3.5e with laser weapons, but it's just so god damned fun.

Zweihander, Conan 2d20, 40k RP

I dislike them both but still play some occasionally. I would do 3.5 over pathfinder because pathfinder didn't copy some of the actual decent stuff in 3.5 like tome of battle and tome of magic, so I can't play my favorite class the binder

A moment of silence for the best d20 fantasy game

5e is OK, but I have to homebrew it to shit and beyond in order to run any setting besides FR and have fun with it.

5e is OK, but I have to homebrew it to shit and beyond in order to run any setting besides FR and have fun with it.

Unless someone starts using suppressing fire and it turns into a WW1 style cover hugging simulator.

d&d3.5 bc grog lol

Yeah, it's a shame about Legend.

Not sure why you are replying to that post tho.

This, and gurps and 40krpg.

>Lamentations of the Flame Princess
For the Adventures and crazy ideas

>DCC
For the game system and magic system

3.5 is great. Only downside (and most of the hate) is because it's very easy to break accidentally. But for an experienced group it gives you everything you need. Doesn't hurt that a lot of my favorite setting material was written for it, either.

Fate absolutely IS a DIY system, which can be a plus or minus depending on what you're going for. If you're getting in to the weeds with it, it can take a ton of time to get everything how you want it. Flip side is it's supremely hackable - you can figure out a way to get it to handle anything, and doing so doesn't require buying a ton of extra splatbooks.

Best example I can give is how easily it lets you balance shit that has no business being balanced. Get that dresden-style party going where you have a Master Blaster type duo, a psychic chinchilla person, a 4000 year old vampire, an unnamed entity from the Z Dimension, and Steve who holds the local high score in Burger Time, and it all just sorta works.

Pathfinder, no other game has so many pieces to build characters and encounters from. And while it does have horrible flaws, I've yet to find a game that doesn't.

Care to tell us more? I've heard good things about Fantasy Craft but no one seems to play it.

Most of the non-core stuff from 3.5 has Pathfinder versions from third-party companies. Dreamscarred Press made versions of Psionics, Tome of Battle and Incarnum, and Radiance House has its own version of the Binder.

I just like having crazy options when making crazy games, man

Shadowrun if i need crazy depth and complicated

Cortex if i just want to play

i hate strict pass/fail systems

spbp

Ryuutama for me.

I like the idea of a cozy, comfy fantasy world with a heavy emphasis on exploring the world, experiencing other cultures, and trading. (I know you can do this in other games, but this one was built almost specifically for it. It *was* built specifically for the next bit.)

It's also an easy recommendation to new players, especially people who want to be GMs but want or need a bit more of a tutorial on how to be one. (Or just a good refresher or breather for more experienced GMs.)

Out of curiosity what do you prefer about DCC's mechanics over LotFP's? I have both but haven't played either. However, as someone who prefers rules to be fairly lite I find LotFP to be more appealing.

D&D 4th edition.
* Concise, easy to understand rules system.
* Focus on tactical yet thematic combat structure.
* Martials can do interesting shit too, instead of just being meatshields for the mages.
* Nentir Vale setting is different to the bog-standard human-centric neo-Earth that's been repeated over and over in D&D.
* Intuitive, easy to grasp cosmology.
* Lots of great fluff tucked away where it needs to be.
* Shamelessly advocacy for non-human PCs and settlements.
* Lots of world-inspiring titbits to help you really make a setting your own.

>mbalance comes up almost not at all when you run a themed game - Cleric/Paladin/Paladin/Favored Soul on holy crusade, Rogue/fighter/urban ranger/rogue banding together to deal with the foreign thieves guild forcibly muscling in and distributing strange powders to the lower classes, etc.
Honestly I want to play campaigns like this.
All Some kind of vagabond/theif (Rogue/Bard/Illusionist Wizard) or maybe Restricting it to Wizards only (different specializations).

Open Legend has some potential but the lack of any kind of monster manual for it just kills it because you have to make up every monster to run it

>imbalance comes up almost not at all when you run a themed game - Cleric/Paladin/Paladin/Favored Soul on holy crusade

Unless the paladin pulls some seriously heavy duty optimisation, he's going to really suck next to the Cleric (especially if the cleric just decides "hey, how about I'm a smite cleric instead?")

myfarog.

because the lore and the points of darkness in game make excelent cursed forests

DnD is inferior to hackmaster on all regards, the only reason fags play it is because of the marketing and the brand.

That IS the point of suppressing fire user

A lot of gms won't allow the third party pathfinder stuff :(

My own.

Classic unisystem (AFMBE, Witchcraft, ConX2)
>Point Buy
>Requires less wizardry than GURPS
>Fragile, human characters usually
>Skill counts
>Graduated success (and I houserule for two kinds of failure)
>Easy to teach, everyone gets zombies as a first game
>AFMBE supplements mean odd genres are reachable
>Easily hackable
>Comfy

why is graduated seccess so rare?

you're system is shit

I've read through it and I like it. I think that it has a nice mix of some storygame elements (town and world creation) and traditional RPG stuff. I also like that they storygame elements are so simple you can just rip them out of the game because I generally think players are awful at creating stuff.

>it's very easy to break accidentally
No fucking kidding. I've been playing 3.5e for almost a decade, and my GM (who has been one of my GMs for most of that decade and has been playing 3.5e for much longer than I) was completely thrown the other day when we had to check the grappling rules due to how much stupid shit is in the Bo9S.

We spent about 20 minutes on that shit trying to figure out exactly what could and couldn't be done.

hue

I play a homebrew system with open skill system with dices as attributes.
The combat is basically problem solving with physics behind it.
If you try to attack an opponent using armor with a sword (and you don't have insane strength) it will do basically nothing.
But you can try to stab his exposed parts with a disavantage.

Now, system like these tend to get way too fatal with PCs getting killed by road bandits.

I solved that with lots of inspiration points.

So basically before any difficult fight the players prepare themselves by roleplaying the downtime in heroic ways and ofc preparing themselves.

Burning Wheel.

Forget to mention that I don't use any kinds of attribute, and this is the best part in my experience and opinion.

Yet you still play it? It's amazing how the brains of dndrones (don't) work.

Amber Diceless
Legends of the Wulin.
Pathfinder.
Starfinder.
RIFTS.

Probably Song of Swords, it somehow struck a good sweet spot for my group in terms of grittyness and the rules, and I managed to make a few homebrews for us to fill in what wasn't yet fully present, like magic.

WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY 2E

TRAVELLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER

WARHAAMMEEEEER

TRAAAAAAVELLER

TRAVELHAMMER 2E

You have good taste

It's a neat way to have dice pool stuff with slightly fewer dice

plebeian post with a patrician message

>Amber Diceless
always found I liked the idea of amber much more than the actual experience

that is warhammer yes.

Honestly, I like fantasy flights star wars games. Sure the unique dice is a turn off for some. (And it really dose need actual movement rules if you want to use a precise map) The ability to 'spend' what you roll really dose help recreate that cinematic feeling and tension as your enemy can do the same.

GURPS. Gets meme'd a lot, but it's good.
>Intuitive, pretty easy to understand
>Framing for any given rule isn't totally contrived. No fighting over what HP is, for example.
>Elegant, easily moddable ruleset
>Averages and sexy-ass bell curves make my dick hard
>Balanced around something-not-entirely-unlike-reality, easy to exaggerate for cinematic games
>I can run anything in it
Feels good, man.

>OSR mishmash, that can learn towards B/X for simplicity, or 2e for options
>GURPS for when you want a detailed system
>Traveller for space shit 'cause it's so damn great (alternatively Stars Without Number)
>Savage Worlds for strange settings when you don't want/need the complexity of GURPS
>Risus for super-light games

Ars Magica. The system is so tied to the setting, the magic system has the right amount of complexity mixedvwith ease of accessibility, and advancement gives a sense and scale of time. Also

>Wizards can't be OP if everyone has a wizard.

Urban shadows. It does Wod better than any WoD game