Your favorite PnP RPG system?

[Serus]

I never liked Vampire emo-faggotry and all related stuff. DnD of any edition is better left for computer crpg (as there isn't much choice).

What I don't get is just who plays Vampire like that? Woe is unto he who is I, because I can no longer eat wiener blah blah... The best vampire games are ones where half of the group is playing cold-blooded bastards and maybe a few are sort of not psychopaths and try to act as some sort of conscience for the group. But nobody whines on about their friggin' feelings and whatever.

Its ok if you play it like that i guess but the whole setting is a bit weird. Maybe i am not the biggest fan of vampires in general, thats all.

 

[Alex]

I never played Vampire, but I heard lots of stories that made it look like a really boring railroad where the players get to see how awesome the characters created by the game's author are. I imagine this would change from group to group, but I do wonder which playstyle people who play Vampire prefer.

 

[Destroid]

Apparently V:TM is very popular with the ladies.

 

[roll-a-die]

I never played Vampire, but I heard lots of stories that made it look like a really boring railroad where the players get to see how awesome the characters created by the game's author are. I imagine this would change from group to group, but I do wonder which playstyle people who play Vampire prefer.

Depends on how good your GM/ST is. If you find someone who tweaks the shit out of the background lore and metagame, or disregards it completely it's very good. It turns into a railroad otherwise.

 

[Havoc]

I know d20srd site... but I want a easy to use program that can sort monsters by CR, climate or other things and also be able to change the CR by adding class levels.

http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20monsterfilter/

There's also a project floating around /tg/ to add all the fluff books to the SRD, but I don't have the link for that.

Thanks. Wonder if there's a Pathfinder monster filter.
Ohh and I found a monster generator (or something like that).
http://www.dinglesgames.com/

 

[deus101]

I never liked Vampire emo-faggotry and all related stuff. DnD of any edition is better left for computer crpg (as there isn't much choice).

What I don't get is just who plays Vampire like that? Woe is unto he who is I, because I can no longer eat wiener blah blah... The best vampire games are ones where half of the group is playing cold-blooded bastards and maybe a few are sort of not psychopaths and try to act as some sort of conscience for the group. But nobody whines on about their friggin' feelings and whatever.

Its ok if you play it like that i guess but the whole setting is a bit weird. Maybe i am not the biggest fan of vampires in general, thats all.

V:TM is more Punk then "dark & brooding", that punk style seems to have been tossed out in nWoD though.

 

[deus101]

...just seemed appropriate somehow.

 

[Excidium]

V:TM is more Punk then "dark & brooding", that punk style seems to have been tossed out in nWoD though.

Like everything in the World of darkness, it varies from group to group. Specially in nWOD, there's a lot more freedom to work with different themes and atmospheres. That punk style is still there if the group wants it that way, but generally Vt:R games are a lot more about politics and social intrigue than running around kicking ass.

Black Dog games.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

Apparently V:TM is very popular with the ladies.

What? Ladies don't do anything else than knit and go to school and worry about money and other fucking boring stuff.

 

[flabbyjack]

Shadowrun had the best combat ruleset, simple, intuitive, and fast. Blows World of Darkness and AD&D away

 

[deus101]

Simple usually isnt GOOD!

 

[deus101]

Apparently V:TM is very popular with the ladies.

What? Ladies don't do anything else than knit and go to school and worry about money and other fucking boring stuff.

Actually in my group there's a woman who knits WHILE RPG'in in WTM.

She's playing that Catif i was talking about.

 

[deus101]

Vampire....Wampire....Wanker....

Heh, he was right..

 

[Ancient]

triple post

 

[deus101]

IM BORED!

 

[SkeleTony]

RuneQuest/Call of Cthulhu/Stomrbringer/BRP/ElfQuest/Ringworld/Superworld = all the same sytem(with tweaks to make it work for specific settings) and were in many(most?) ways superior to all other RPG systems(though arguments CAN be made for HERO and even GURPS being equally good for different reasons).

RQ was either the second or third RPG ever designed/released depending on whom you ask(Ken St. Andre would say Tunnels & Trolls was second and he may be right) and was certainly the first "generic/universal" RPG system.
Some of the things RQ did first which are now standard in RPGs/CRPGs:

1)spell points instead of wonky 'fire and forget' systems.

2)Improve skills through use instead of 'levels'.

3)'Critical successes' when using skills.

4)Hit Points not increasing with exp/levels but instead rooted in actual physique of the character/creature.

etc.

HERO/Champions preceded GURPS and was more logically consistent all around but later GURPS editions and 3rd ed. compendium rules fixed some of that system's issues. Both systems do a great job of being truly 'universal'/generic though both still have issues with different genres(so did the RQ/Basic Role Play system).

Ghostbusters and Paranoia were both developed by West End Games IIRC and were both great systems for those specific games. Fun and funny. Same goes for TOON by Steve Jackson games which allowed for RPGing in a Warner Bros inspired cartoon game setting.

Villains & Vigilantes by Jeff Dee was the first superhero RPG ever created and while it is outdated and suffered from being too ingrained in that 'D&D mold' it did have a few really good and innovative systems within.

Living Legends was Jeff Dee's more recent and overall much better superhero RPG. In many ways it is superior to CHAMPIONS.

Some of the worst RPGs ever created were:

D&D/AD&D - While they have a certain primitive charm they are so ultra-logically FUBAR and WTF?! in design that I cannot give them passes due to their age. If you want a superior game for the 'primitive charm' factor then play Tunnels & Trolls and house rule new character classes and other rules add-ons.

Warhammer FRP - Not nearly as bad as D&D/AD&D and there ARE good things about this game. The setting, some of the systems within the system itself. But HOLY FUCK there are some bad. the whole 1-10 system as the designers implemented it lead to so many fucked up issues where races basically almost indistinguishable from one another in important ways and a whole host of other problems I won't get into here.
Yeah you could fix a lot of the issues through house ruling fuck...why bother? You are way better off just using GURPS or HERO or RuneQuest with the Warhammer setting.


Diceless and 'Freeform' and 'systemless' games were all crap IMO but I have respect for what the authors of some of those systems tried to do, even if I hated those games.

 

[kris]

I almost get the urge to bring up some old topic like this. Seems half here played some vampire games, confirming that the codex is now the home of faggots.

I preffered Rolemaster, tailored for my needs. If nothing else, it was really fun, but time comsuming, to make character in it. Only problem I ever had was that it was so very magic oriented.

Also I played most Swedish PnP systems, Star wars ones and a couple of superhero ones.

 

[SkeleTony]

I almost get the urge to bring up some old topic like this. Seems half here played some vampire games, confirming that the codex is now the home of faggots.

I preffered Rolemaster, tailored for my needs. If nothing else, it was really fun, but time comsuming, to make character in it. Only problem I ever had was that it was so very magic oriented.

Also I played most Swedish PnP systems, Star wars ones and a couple of superhero ones.

Rolemaster was a pretty good design for the most part. Suffered from 'table-itus' though. You almost could not throw a rock in that game without consulting 4 different tables. Still MILES ahead of D&D and other more popular systems. Didn't do anything innovative or awe-inspiring but what it did it did well.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Rolemaster / MERP, for the awesome critical hit tables with built in "weapon type vs armor" that made melee combat much more interesting.

Charts are a pretty good mechanic really, they can play quite fast once you know what you're doing. Typically each person would have a photocopied version of each of the critical hit tables that they'd need to use for their PC.

AD&D and 3rd edition D&D were fine too, but...

I feel like a lot of the fun I had with D&D was caused more by the fact that P&P roleplaying with your friends is an inherently fun activity than by anything unique to the D&D mechanics that is "extra fun".

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Burning Wheel, because the inherent design of the game keeps players on task and lets you skip all of the boring open ended bullshit so you can get to meaty dialogues and combat scenes. Player choices affect every single decision, and combat is capable of being one based on player choice alone, regardless of character stats, though they help tilt the odds in your favor if you have better ones. The way that the wound and armor system works also forces you to think seriously before engaging in any kind of a fight on account of just how damned lethal things are, because one lucky swing can take your badass huskarl out from the get-go. You also get to see your character develop in unexpected ways as the events transpire in the game, which provides a much more organic sense of advancement because the character can often change in ways you don't even want(like getting shell-shocked, maimed, or exiled etc)

All in all, it's pretty much the best PnP game ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burning_Wheel

 

[Azrael the cat]

Apparently V:TM is very popular with the ladies.

What? Ladies don't do anything else than knit and go to school and worry about money and other fucking boring stuff.

Actually in my group there's a woman who knits WHILE RPG'in in WTM.

She's playing that Catif i was talking about.

Yeah, have 2 women in my current group. Granted, one is my wife. Makes for much better provisioning - quality snacks and wine instead of crisps and mountain dew is a nice change.

 

[Grunker]

Second post already ended the thread. Why continue?

derp

 

[SuicideBunny]

Didn't do anything innovative or awe-inspiring but what it did it did well.

lolwut?
rolemaster sucked hard.
allegedly generic system that is in essence a non-generic system for which someone was just too damn lazy to write a proper setting that contained more than "like, there was this kind of magic, and then something happened, and, like, it split into those kinds of magic, and that's it".
the only thing rolemaster did good was high fatality rates and being a spreadsheet powergamer's wet dream (so, when i pick this disadvantage, i get to start with one spell list up to level 50 AND a demon as my mentor?).

the combat sucked hard and was incredibly slow without adding any depth, character creation was slow which sucked hard because characters died fast (measured in in-game time, not so much real time), iirc you could friggin die from attempting to meditate because, grats, unmodified 66, something "found" you and you never ever wake up again.

 

[Irxy]

I never played Vampire, but I heard lots of stories that made it look like a really boring railroad where the players get to see how awesome the characters created by the game's author are. I imagine this would change from group to group, but I do wonder which playstyle people who play Vampire prefer.

Vampire is a storytelling game, as are most other WoD settings. Which is much more complex than your typical d&d dungeon crawl and obviously depends a lot on gamemaster's own creativity. If all your master is good for is getting you through some official pre-made campaigns, I can imagine it feeling like an emo theme-park. Also, it is a great source material if you are designing your own darker setting and adventures, especially the more bizarre themebooks like Wraith etc.

 

[MicoSelva]

Some of the things RQ did first which are now standard in RPGs/CRPGs:

4)Hit Points not increasing with exp/levels but instead rooted in actual physique of the character/creature.

I wish it really was a standard in CRPGs.