So...

If you wanted GURPs, you should have said so in the first place.

>Why is the assumption that the GM is incompetent?
Why did you get that impression? What I'm saying is that, *if* the GM is incompetent (or worse, an asshole), allowing him to mess with the rules is not good.

>It's not homebrewing when every rpg gives the GM license to adjudicate situations as they see fit.
It is if the GM needs to make up new/different rules.

>player centric statements
The rules need account for all possible situations?

Wow, you sure sound like a nice guy that I should help. I'm sure you would be grateful and not just bitch about something stupid.

If you need to DIY a product you bought so that it is usable and enjoyable to you, then it is a shitty product.

No, they should be light and open-ended enough that they don't get in the way of roleplaying (emphasis on role).

I'd like to tell/share, but, well, I got memory I got memory issues.
You'd have better propositions from Veeky Forums if it was about cyberpunk/space opera.

Genesys?

The rules need to be flexible enough to cover the majority of situations with the minimum of rules bulk. You don't want a different rule for every different situation, and you don't want to be missing a bunch of important rules, like "melee combat" or being unable to kick in gerwalk mode.

Then what is an example of a rule that "gets in the way of roleplaying" that a GM can't change?
The only thing I can think of is VtR's vampire clash, but you get so many bonuses to it that failing it and frenzying is an outlier result at best. I've seen it happen a single time out of a dicepool of 6.

For the sake of recommending something different i say the Cypher System. It has rules for running generic fantasy in the core book. Its not very crunchy. But it's very easy to homebrew on the spot. And the gm doesn't roll dice.

This. ORE is great

DnD 5e. It covers all of the criteria you listed.

The GM can do what they want to, but you can't pretend people who run a game don't want to, you know, run that game. If the rules of the game hinder good storytelling, not every GM is going to notice or care. The ones who do usually don't play those systems, because they've moved on to better things.

Sadly, there's way more GMs who can't manage that, so systems that help them so they can manage without consciously trying to DIY it in should be pushed more, especially towards new GMs who are putting their trust on these books to teach them how to do their job right.

By modern, do you mean the game itself is modern or it has a modern setting?

No, you don't understand. DnD design is not elegant. It has a lot of unnecessary interdependency and stuff.

So, when you face a DnD ruleset as a would-be modder, you are given a tangle of wires that you need to either untangle completely and reassemble in a more sane way, or just pull at a wire that you don't like while risking something goes wrong inside of the wireball. And you won't be able to know what went wrong until you step into it.
That's a lot of work either way, work that a customer shouldn't be able to do.

If DnD had more elegant design, it would either make all interdependencies transparent or had a different philosophy to it: something modular and keeping that tangled factor to a minimum.

To add: it's not even a problem of the system per se, it's more of a communication problem. DnD has a fairly narrow scope of things that it does well, but instead of clearly signalling its scope, it does claim that it does everything well. "You just need to unleash your fantasy." That's bullshit.

So, GMs that want to do what DnD can't do by design have to do a lot of DIY work because of dishonest product positioning.

I think they just mean modern game design, which is a vague qualifier but everyone knows what it means anyways.

Basically something that's focused on creating a good experience, and not on some other unknowable agenda.

He said mechanics that do not hinder good storytelling. A game where you can tell someone's evil just by casting a first-level spell doesn't qualify.

I'm not even talking about that, I mean something as simple as telling a player they can roll for intimidate with strength or intelligence, versus charisma.
You are talking about homebrewing mechanics.

When I think of modern games I don't think of trying to create a good experience, I think of everything having some dumb gimmick.

Confirmed for a meming never actually played guy shitting up our board for because they're too afraid or contrarian to actually play RPGs.

Or, at least, never playing 5e.
Detect evil doesn't actually detect evil any more.

>Detect Evil and Good
>1st-level divination
>Casting Time: 1 action
>Range: Self
>Components: V, S
>Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
>For the duration, you know if there is an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead within 30 feet of you, as well as where the creature is located. Similarly, you know if there is a place or object within 30 feet of you that has been magically consecrated or desecrated.

>The spell can penetrate most barriers, but it is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt.

5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/detectEvilandGood.htm

Believe me, I won't help you. Good luck.

I know you don't want 5e, but the answer is 5e.

If you want mechanics that do not inhibit storytelling, what you really want is the ability to make a ruling that seems fair when a hard rule does not exist, and to do so quickly as to not disrupt flow. 5e's streamlined their core mechanics to be simple and consistent enough that you will find a parallel rule, without much effort, that players will accept. There are reasons to dislike 5e, but disrupting a story is not one of them.

Most systems have rules upon rules upon rules which makes a situation where it seems the GM is just making something up randomly, or you find something better an hour later, or your ruling contradicts something else. It hobbles the narrative. Then you have systems like GURPS which will technically cover everything, but the investment in time to 'get it' is just immense.

I'd say go with a modified 5e or PF.

>I mean something as simple as telling a player they can roll for intimidate with strength or intelligence, versus charisma

That's just common sense. It doesn't require any actual work for someone who's not a totally new DM. It still is kind of shitty if a rulebook makes it look like you can't roll STR/INT instead of CHA. Wordings should be as explicit as possible for a TRPG.

I'm talking more about stuff like the whole combat system in oWoD that is just a scope mismatch. Look, White Wolf went out of their way to train their marginalised 90's emo kid target audience to do roleplay the right way, with all the tens to hundreds pages spent on "personal horror" and "political manoeuvring", but the rule set, if taken straight, is more about trenchcoat+katana murderhobos having fun with napalm. On top of being shitty, clunky and imbalanced. It actively hinders having fun and having more of it.

And it's not that easy to understand this for your average group. If they do, they'd still have to cut out or mod that combat system, which is honestly too much of a work done for free.

I have my reasons to dislike 5e or PF, and I have explicitly asked user to not mention those.

I am aware that 5e is a good system. Just tell me what's the next best thing.

And modding 5e/PF is not an option.

As a GM I'd much rather a system I don't have to overule on a regular basis. I'd rather focus my energy on setting up the game and resolving player action .
I want to be more of a referee than a god.

I have nothing against ruling or homebrew, they are usefull and satisfying. However, I'd rather run a system that makes itself clear enough and leaves room enough for those alterations to feel like natural extensions of the game.

Sorry user. That was a joke. I was trying to ruse you. I didn't realize you were retarded. I apologize.

I bet, user.

What I mean is that modern game design places the enjoyment in the moment of play, it's not like ODnD where the dungeon is meant to be a slog and you're mostly vying for that level up or like 3.PF where the majority of the content is there for theorycrafting and most of the enjoyment is in the character creation minigame.

I'm not saying these other design philosophies are intentional, it's just how they come off in comparison.

>the rule set, if taken straight, is more about trenchcoat+katana murderhobos having fun with napalm

Care to elaborate a little bit? oWoD is highly random and very high lethality, also exp gains are miniscule and are based on mostly how much do you play and a little bit on how well do you roleplay, this doesn't fit a cheezy action-oriented game at all, but can work for something closer to war drama precisely because of the high lethality.

Well, it is telling that even with high lethality combat is a slog.
Also, high lethality is more of a meme. Because of dice pool penalties when wounded, combat becomes an unnecessarily dragged out death spiral. Remember that initiative is FILO in oWoD. Also three rolls on every attack.

And all of this takes up tens of pages in the rulebook.

What he means is that VtM ended up being Vampire superheroes more than not, where the author intent of it being a dark game of self loathing, self destructive monsters ended up being super powered humans who do what they want in practice.
I'm old enough to remember the OWoD heyday, and I rarely found a game that wasn't run like that, or the GMs that cleaved to the rules as much as possible.

BRP
Basic role-playing is one of the oldest systems, yet it does not necessarily feel old. It is highly flexible, perhaps the second most flexible of all classic systems.

>WHFRP

the crunch in that system holds back role playing pretty good, especially if you are on some kind of journey where you develop into a job or responsibility.

Shadow of the Demon Lord (is 5e++),
Barbarians of Lemuria (is actually a bit light),
Savage Worlds (with some splats),
FATE/Accelerated,
PbtA stuff like Fellowship and Blades in the Dark,
D&D 4e (possibly a bit too crunchy),
Strike! (weird mix of low and medium crunch)

Don't tell your players what system they're using and start a Dark Heresy session on a medieval deathworld

Climax of the campaign is a "war in heaven" between chaos space Marines and a loyalist chapter.

Describe things in intentionally vague/fantasy esque ways and see how long it takes them to figure out what's happening.

Hell yeah. Reign is super fun, and I will forever champion their use of making the Counterspell skill the act of "knowing how to fuck up mages casting" and therefore completely independent of magic.

For real though OP, give Reign a shot.

But that's every rpg out there. It isn't a video game, having to diy to make it happen is part of the deal

Get yourself an xbox and go bitch on /v/ instead.

Okay, then you should explain said reasons so we don't recommend a system that's not 5e but has all the qualities that you hate.

CJ Carella's Witchcraft. (90s aesthetic tho)

Runequest/Basic Roleplaying Engine.

You are the reason why TRPG market is filled with poor quality shit. You voting with your wallet disincentivises the "game designers" to put effort into the products.

>thinking that players can make their characters and learn the game without even knowing what system they're playing
Well, this is the dumbest thing I've seen today.

I'd use GURPS with very minimalist rule options.

Mythras has rules to run modern fantasy that has a lot to help roleplaying and story built in - there’s a big influence on culture and passions, and the crunchy combat is satisfying and tactical of that’s something you are into.

Barbarians of Lemuria

>everything having some dumb gimmick
Gimmicks aren't modern at all. For instance, it's how D&D has always worked. Every class is just special gimmicks. Notable items are either numerical buffs or special gimmicks. Kits are just gimmicks. Virtually all D&D settings are just excuses to shift the valuation of parts of the game to change what gimmicks matter.
The difference between the gimmickiness of, say, a capable B/X D&D character and a Feng Shui 2 character (outside of the genre) is how obfuscated the gimmicks are.

One day you have to start making sense, user.

Take Dresden Files Accelerated and massage the modern world bits out of it and you should be quite set. Should be pretty easy, after all, it's all just variable stuff layered on top of Fate Accelerated. It's easy to reverse engineer Fate stuff.

Or perhaps consider a version of Basic D&D or a comparable OSR game. The organization tends to be a good deal more dense than modern games but once people settle in and you get it moving it's pretty rad, and you'll find the rules don't really ever step on your toes so long as the GM is comfortable. Keep "rulings not rules," in mind and you'll be right as rain.

Zweihander

I mean the system itself has some gimmick, like "narrative" mechanics that are all the rage now.

Mutants & Masterminds. fantasy version

Dragon de Poche2

Ryuutama

Fatal!

Roll for... FUN!

Well, at least decent modern systems allow for easy castration of that narrative bullshit.

On a slightly related note, does anyone have any experience with cypher? Is it fun?

fuck this guy, he's either a troll or he's so selfabsorbed he can't realize he is most likely the problem at ALL of his game tables

this is literally a thing in 5e, what are you on about?