Favorite System

Post that writeup!

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.

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.

Can't find a hires picture if the cover for the life of me, but Agone us my favorite system. It's based on a series of novels by a French author, Mathieu Gaborit, so it's git a lot of setting info, and it has a huge variety of character options, both magical and mundane. If you want to, you can literally build a magic sword that possess anyone who wild it and play as that.

It has extremely creative schools of magic that are nothing like the more common wizard, warlock, cleric at all. You can either have a hist of small fey like creatures called dancers that cast spells as you direct them, summon Demons, or use poetry, music, painting, or sculpture to cause magical effects. Most of tge nonhuman races also have their own forms if magical abilities, ranging from magic tattoos, to raising plant monsters.
There are even rules for fusing several of these magic systems to make even stranger effects, like Witchcraft which fuses dancers and Demons.
A lot of these were not translated to English though... But I've been doing this myself (and sharing the finished products on the pdf share thread).
This game is still fairly popular in France, but the company has long gone bankrupt, and the game never got a second edition because a few of the rights holders refuse to allow it...

I'm very much a fan of Dragonquest. It's a medievalish fantasy system where they do a very good job of balancing out the magical skills with other more mundane ones. Magic can be extremely powerful, but all the really good magical stuff are these rituals with casting times in the hours to days, and often requiring hard to find, exotic components. You need the mages (adepts) to often do stuff, but you almost always need big burly guys with weapons to keep them alive, since magic is near useless for combat.

Also, it has this mixed point buy and rolling character generation that's really neat, along with an astrological system that influences the fate of everyone. This is a game where you really do get mechanical benefits for the climax of your evil mass undead raising ritual to come at the stroke of midnight on Walpurgisnacht.

That actually sounds really cool. Have you ever considered looking into republishing your translations/adjustments as a 'new' game? Change the setting enough to make it generic and so on. If you're putting all that work in it seems like a shame to not be able to popularise it more. I'd never heard of the game before now, but I really want to give it a try.

Yeah, I really want to love it, and I love a lot of it. But the game don't make it easy.

Define clunky? I mean it follows the OSR methodology of "tables for everything because the GM should be intelligent enough that all he really needs is a list of options and an explanation of how to use them," And I would say it's a bit more hefty in the way of having rules for survival or seafaring, or other stuff, but as far as what the Player will actually look at and use, it's on par with 5e or AD&D. The GM is not really any worse, just a bit more reading.

The wager system from Houses of the Blooded.

It's for a specific style of game, mainly one with heavy narrative control by the players and where the players are engaging in generating there own conflict and drama.

But it is the most amazing system for cooperative narrative I've ever seen. Combined with the blessings system it could result in some of the best and most surprising game sessions.

Give us the details

Not him, but I've read the system, although I've never had a chance to play it.

It's a system which uses d6 pools, but a base success only usually yields a limited amount of narrative agency a player can use to influence a situation.

Wagers involves setting aside dice from your pool, decreasing your chance to succeed, but you get extra narrative control for every wager, so an expert isn't just more likely to pass a simple check, they can wager a lot of dice to get a lot more stuff done in the process.

Ditto. And you don't have to necessarily go pulpy or high action - I've ran a SW campaign where we had several 4-5 hour sessions in a row fixated around exploration and socialisation, with lots of worldbuilding and character deverlopment thrown in. It's really flexible and simple to play and learn. As a GM it's really easy to go for.

So it's loosely based on FATE aspect system but you generate dice pools of d6.

For each action, or game statement (example 'I have read something about this character'). Everyone involved publicaly generate a pool, but secretly wager any number of dice.

Wagers let you add to that statement. The person who rolls highest gets to decide the truth of the initial statement, and make the first wager statement, but everyone who gets a minimum value keeps half their wagers round up.

So winner goes "this happens, AND x".
Then the next highest goes "AND this".
Going in turns until all the wagers are used.

Sounds cool but it seems it can get VERY retarded VERY fast.

Blessings are unique things that can let you use your 'style points', ie FATE points the GM can also hand out whenever he thinks you did something cool.

Like on let's you use them to declare that some element of the scene can be used to effect combat. Another let's you get the first wager in a type of roll.

The most powerful cost 5 pts, and only work in a specific stat vs stat, but let you remove everyone else's wagers after the roll.
So in on example from play the opponent wagered 1, which was enough that she didn't get the highest but did succeed, so kept the wager. Then cancelled all the PC's wagers.
So he succeeded, but then she got to modify that if. He convinced to do a thing, but then see set the cost, and he didn't get to modify after that.

It can. Hence needs a specific game and group to get the best results.

Players are allowed to spend style to deny wagers that state something about their character.
Pushing something too much on another player, and never accepting influence are both "Bad Form".

If you can find a group that can use it, it let's you do stuff no other game I've tried let's you do.

Also the way aspects work is that it's easier to get more dice to higher the tension ramps up.

Without special aspects you are normally topping out at 7 dice, with 2-4 being common. Base success is 10.
Once insults, injuries, inspiration, romance, heartbreak, etc get worked in, you get pools over 10 dice.

Oops bad memory, tops at 11, but that's hard.
Max stat 5, +3 for personal aspect, +1 for name bonus, +2 for secret name bonus. But using names is restricted, and secret names are dangerous.
Aspects are more restricted than FATE core. Pools over 6 without special aspects were rare so I forgot.

I don't really have a single favorite, but I love playing Veeky Forums homebrew games because they usually have some interesting mechanical quirks that keep things feeling fresh. Even the unfinished ones.

Well... I'm not sure about how legal such a thing would be... While I would love to do that, it kind of feels dirty... Because the actual author is totally down for the thing to come back, and he's a pretty cool guy, it's just a lot of the rights to the various parts of the system are tied down by a bunch of the games creators. Also, the games mechanics are built to emulate the setting it's based on, so it would me difficult to separate the two...

Ahh, that's a damn shame.

D&D, because I haven't tried anything else.

Also, just cuz I forgot to add this, the core rule book, GM screen, two supplements, and an adventure module were all translated to English, it's just the additional supplements, of which there are many, that were never translated.

You can literally get the whole English set, mint condition, from Troll and Toad, for ~35 US dollars. And that's including the shipping I paid (weirdly they don't default to the cheapest shipping option though, just in case you were interested in getting it).

I'm a big fan of Gurps. I really love crunch and granularity, and the absurd diversity of character options.

I also want to get into HERO but I'm a bit offput by the lack of players/support compared even to GURPS, plus a bit intimidated by the sheer level of crunch the system has

I heard about it.
Why do you like it ?

For fantasy stuff about being People Being Heroes:

Heroquest 2, it's simple but has quite some mechanical depth and fluid without being fast.
It does away with alot of bullshit that has infiltrated the hobby and is pure bliss to GM.

For tacticool action time and Sci-fi stuff:

Mongoose 1E Traveller, again a system without rules it doesn't need, simple enough to mod it without fucking 12 other mechanics over and alot of material for GMs to create stuff.
Also the 3rd party support is really good, i reccomend the magic supplement and the german robot supplement.

for being a combat genius he has a pretty stupid sword.
Well maybe it's a holyday photo of him and it's his "sunday sword" or something like that.

I like BRP and all his sons.
They are easy to learn so you can iniciate normies without much problems, the feel is of a gritty and down to earth system, where an error can cost your life or limb makes players think before charge like idiots, and there are so many variants than you can mix and match the best parts of each one with ease. The combat is fun and deadly, you really don't want to chew more than you can unless you want to reroll another character tough. There are lots of magical system for it, lots of monsters from rats to Cthulu, and it's very good for historicals or Low fantasy (tough you can run it in a wacky setting like glorantha and works well).

Char gen is very easy.choose a race at lvl 0, choose a class at 1,choose an advance class at 4, master class at 10. Each adventure gives 1 level. And you can mix and match so you can have a warrior druid engineer that is also a robot race. I also like the setting, even if the grand plan of Satan is autistic.

>even if the grand plan of Satan is autistic
You can't just say that and don't tell us about said plan.

Satan (real name diabolus) was an elf that wanted to be the god of humans, he gathered his friends to do this but before he could start the other elves declared war on him to keep the balance of power. They signed a white peace and he had to settle being satan. But being satan sucks, so he made a prophet on earth proclaim that a new god was coming and the other gods are lies, and only belief will bring him close to us. When enough people believe in the new god diabolus will leave hell and assume the role of the benevolent god of humans he always wanted to be. This is retarded because a spirit bomb sent to the wrong address won't really help you. My group home brewed this to diabolus slowly telling his followers to start following the new god so the line gets blurred and he transforms.

Is there any system that is basically "gurps, but linear dice?"

The land of makebelieve

BRP. Start with Mythras and M-Space and that's really all you need for most genres, then just borrow from other BRP spinoffs for whatever you need.

At the moment, Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells. It's very simple (four stats, roll under, advantage or disadvantage based on narrative elements), which makes it easy enough for me to DM and make content for.

dnd

I've only tried a couple but D&D 5e is my favorite. It's simple enough that things keep moving fast but has enough complexity to keep things interesting. Rolling a bunch of different dice is fun. Also I like the campy generic fantasy of FR, it's not too dark or edgy, I like simple things and I like to be comfy. Even a campaign like CoS manages to mesh spooky with comfy pretty well, I like that, I like to chill when playing.

>not liking logarithmic dice
What's wrong with you?

Burning Empires. It's related to Burning Wheel but it's for roleplaying the infiltration, usurpation, and invasion of a sci-fi world by worms-that-over-your-brain (think Gou'ald or Yeerks).

1) It's sci-fi and my god, I love sci-fi.

2) It uses lifepaths for character creation and my god, I love lifepaths (shout to Traveller here as well, which satisfies both of the points so far).

3) The players and GM generate the world and characters together so everyone is invested in the fight to save their world. No one just shows up with a character sheet they generated using some bizarre supplement that has no attachment to the story.

4) PCs don't start as nobodies. You're expected to be the leader of a Guild, a Princess, an Admiral, a General, and so on.

5) Every roll and conflict has its stakes set up just prior so that people know what failure and success mean. The conflict system isn't used for killing people, there's an entirely separate subsystem for that called "I Corner Him And Shoot Him In The Face". Stopping murderhobo-ism cold is great.

6) It's written in a very colloquial tone instead of in a very dry, technical way I find a lot of long RPGs are written. (I love you GURPS but goddamn your manuals are dry). Burning Empires reads like your friend is explaining his lovingly crafted RPG across the kitchen table, and it's actually good.

7) It's not this rules-light trash that's been proliferating throughout the hobby.

8) It takes inspiration from all the good, old sci-fi like Dune, Foundation, and so on and the end result is something a lot better than the other derivation of that melange, 40k.

9) It uses the same BITs (Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits) system from Burning Wheel, which will actually improve you as a roleplayer for having read it.

It's basically the best game ever, but it's also casting pearls before swine.

Now yo dunnit

Just kidding, DnD is okay, as long as the users are aware of it's flaws, like with all systems.
The worst people are who go "nu-uh MY specific system is flawless and good for everything"
looking at you GURPS

These days it's Genesys... which is my favorite system.
It's major flaws are that it's got a Very limited stat curve, and tends to be a touch more deadly than 5e, which still makes it pretty damn heroic.
The Specialist Dice are a drawback when talking about it on here, but outside Veeky Forums I've rarely seen anyone complain about them.

>What's wrong with you?
I like to have a easier time crafting stuff for the system

I am currently playing as a mage in genesys. The magic system is actually very flawed, the idea is I am able to create my own spells, the truth is both me and gm have constant problem balancing shit. It needs its magic rules expanded

I've probably been DM for over 3 dozen different systems. I used to have a big problem where I couldn't settle down and even used a few hundred hours of roll20.

In the end, I'd say Cypher System. It's got an OSR view on balance, it's easy to teach because the rules all fit on one page front and back, every rule it has it only has to support having fun playing the game. It's also about familiarity and transparency. I know why every single rule was added and why the dice and resolution mechanics were chosen and what they can do and they all make sense.

It's a house rule machine I guess.

That sounds great

I like they way they do magic items. Eliminates the stockpile of OP bullshit d&d becomes by the high levels

There's a charm to characters decked out in legendary gear, but Cypher allowing you to give people truly special and insane magic items without breaking the game is great.

I'm always bad at having to choose a favorite. I've been sitting here for more than ten minutes now just thinking about it. My tastes are mercurial in general, and it really depends on the group, y'know?

At *this moment* I think it's Open Legend. First off, it's free. Second, in many ways its the spiritual followup to 4e I always wanted, replacing its dynamic-but-too-chunky complexity with a universal system that's easy to work with.

It has a point-buy system with attributes that directly drive actions, and a separate point-buy pool for feats. Your score in attributes like Might, Agility, or Presence adds dice to your roll, rather than a flat modifier, and all dice can explode. It also has an Advantage/Disadvantage system which applies to these added dice, except unlike in most games that have similar mechanics they can stack. Things that in D&D might grant a +2 or +5 instead would grant something like 1 or 2 Advantage, respectively, to your roll.
It takes 4e's defenses, and collapses AC and Reflex into one score--but defenses are also damage reduction, so the attack roll is also the damage roll. With those exploding dice combat is swingy and punishing if you treat it like D&D and just wade in or stand around trying to throw out damage (unless you build almost just for being that sort of melee beast), but because the fact that Advantage and Disadvantage can stack it's always worth it to spend some time to try and seize momentum and secure the upper hand in a fight.

It also breaks down 4e power effects and makes them into a universal list of helpful Boons, and negative Banes, with scaling based on the attributes used to invoke them. You can make an attack to inflict a Bane, or if you succeed hard enough on an attack you can inflict one for free along with the damage. Between those and how they interact with Feats the game's practically got a build-your-own Role/Power Source thing going on.

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.
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.

I hate to sound like a GURPS fag, but, if you're not playing dungeon world, you're doing it wrong.

A Pasta that has aged like fine wine... mixed with pig swill and a Yeast infection.
4/10, classic, but I'd like to see a version with a better version of a PBTA game

youtube.com/watch?v=E26Id3jBB7Q
Is this a bad representation of the system? Because this looks like the most boring shit I've ever seen. Is there a better video/podcast where it's played?

Numenera isn't particularly interesting, as systems go.

I don't know, I always found play-throughs, even popular ones like Critical Role to be very forced and cringey, usually with people embarrassed to be on camera. I bet that one is even worse because they're doing it just to show off the system. I just judge mechanics based on critical thinking and through usage.

This. It's streamlined and elegant, but it doesn't have rules fat and flashy quirks to make it sound appealing.

To some people, having a limited resource to spend to make rolls you care about easier is good, others want flat values with no variety.

i.e. opening a door, in d20 you might have a +5 to kicking in the door, but in Cypher you might have a +6(equivalent), or you might have a +6 and choose to exhaust your character a proportional amount to add even more to your roll if it's important to you. Some characters use that exhaustion more efficiently at some things, it all depends on your character idea.

5E.

I've brought half a dozen people into the hobby by teaching them the basic 5e rules.

>A Wuxia game
Didn't read it further - I'm already in.

There’s a one shot on itmejp’s channel that at least has an entertaining ending.

PF - because it is 3.5, only a bit more polished and structured. And 3.5 is the best system in existence according to everyone aside from this autistic cesspool. Literally can be adapted to any type of game you want.

...

>different opinion means trolling

i like fifth edition because i played all the other ones and hacked everything to shit eventually and i got to start over

Dark Heresy because Crits
That is pretty much it

Having only played FATE, Blades in the Dark, and D&D 5e

I'm gonna say FATE because of just how loose it is, very no stress. If I wanna do it and can justify it it's probably getting done.

In Blades I'm always hurting for downtime actions to try and get anything done.

And I'm so new to D&D I barely know what is going on, and I have like zero ability to not get hit by something that statwise in the other systems I'd be able to block or evade.

Except Spirit Bomb on the wrong adress does work. Haven't you read Dragon Ball?

I'll check it out.

20th Anniversary oWoD games because I'm trash but not trashy enough to lower myself to the level of accepting Dodge as a stat.

Addendum: With the exception of M20 though. Fuck Brucato.

But that's essential to the nothing personal build...

GURPS
Bibliographies

>A tabletop game designer and a veteran player
>still has no favorite system
Is this bad?

Like, of course I could be lame and say one of my own games, but that's disingenious.

L5R - Legend of the Five Rings

>10-sided dice is used for everything
>Dicepools
>Exploding dice
>Established (albeit flawed) setting
>Good take on magic
>No Caster Supremacy bullshit
>Can increase/decrease lethality as the ST wishes
>The focus of the game isn't crawling in dungeons and obtaining swag loot
>The game focuses on character interaction instead
>Conflict between Honor and selfishness that is inherent to everyone
>Demons from the not!Warp trying to eat humanity fought to a standstill by strong motherfuckers

Awww yiss

>Is this bad?
No: I've been a player and one-shot GM for about eight years and I didn't have a favourite system until a yer ago.

Just because you don't have a favourite game doesn't mean that you don't like anything and are a bitter person.

I love GURPS too for the things you mentioned. I like having one system so I don't have to learn new ones every time I want to switch genres. Its versatility is also very appealing.

Regarding HERO, I've got a friend who likes it but they're literally a fucking engineer. It's crunchier than GURPS but it only measures combat utility so I'm not so keen. GURPS has more content.

People who just go "GURPS" in response to every "what system do I use Veeky Forums" are just meming, they don't actually play GURPS, most people who play it are quite aware of its flaws, especially the FUCKING LAYOUT OF THE BOOKS SJ GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.

Unknown Armies. It's simple enough that you can learn to play it easily, but the setting just has so much fun fluff to work with, with skin changing wizards powering up on cutting themselves, alcoholic wizards getting magic mojo over getting increasingly pissed, or men and women filling cosmic archetypes of humanity which lets them change the rules because "that's not how the story goes".

It's lead to some of my favourite games too, with people fighting the ghost of walt disney, trapped in a bottle of bourbon, piloting an animatronic mickey mouse, or a party of friends going on a roadtrip across the country in order to enter the statosphere (where the archetypes of humanity live) in order to help their buddy who accidentally ascended as the avatar of the slacker move into his new house (he couldn't do it himself obviously, because he was the slacker)

It's crazy conspiracy theories and madmen fighting over their patches of magic mojo, with secret societies and wierd monsters in the background. And all of the magic is fundamentally human, all of it born from us and reflecting our own splintered desires.

In short, "You did it".

Damn, that's some good art

I guess. I've had fleeting crushes on some systems (LotW, Ryuutama, DRYH to name a few), but I really just struggle to settle down on a single one I like the best. Even from the games I'm working on.

Well, I just gotta keep experimenting and finding new stuff. It will probably just click someday.

>It will probably just click someday
That's been my experience, yeah.

Different systems are good for different things, too. Even the idea of having a favourite system is a little silly, because realistically people will probably have a "favourite system for fantasy" and a "favourite system for one-shots" and a "favourite system for urban intrigue".

If I had to pick a favourite system overall I'd probably say BESM 3, but I also recognize the failings of it and try to use the right tool for each DMing job.

This ones

How long did you put into that bait of bad systems?

like 5 minutes, I genuinely like them tho

Oh, sorry then.

Doesn't make it NOT dumb

GURPS is fine if you use just the core book, Fantasy Craft is great *after* everybody gets used to the book layout, and I know nothing about Starblazer Adventures.

Pathfinder for being the most casually realistic fantasy roleplaying games, being totally open source and having the most options of any RPG out there. It's also really all that is left of traditional D&D as 5E is basically just a pseudo 4E.

here is your (you)

I tried to GM a SW campaign once and everything was fine until the combat started. It lasted for about an hour and everyone was so bored that we just dropped the campaign and SW itself right there on the spot. It was most likely my fault for making a shitty encounter, but still the whole Shaken thing just makes the combat quite unappealing to me. I also can't stand the language and just the general way the rulebook is written (yes, I know that's a retarded complaint)

I've read the core parts of Burning Wheel and holy fuck does it sound great, but all four combat systems kinda spook me out and dwindle my hope of actually finding people to play anything in BW with.