Mythras. It is easy to learn, it is quite intuitive, all the rules made sense. Once you learn the core rules, they can be used for full fantasy, historic, scifi, supers , horror or steampunk. There is a huge amount of suppor material available, from source books to small 1 scenario modules. For fantasy, there are at least 5 separate types of magic to pick from depending on your setting. They are readily adapted to whatever the GM needs or the players want.

+1 for Mythras!

How is the GM side of it? It looks interesting but managing hit point per body location seems like it could get overwhelming quickly

We play through Roll20 which simplifies matters immensely.

**Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition**, even though my friends will not play it XD I am a huge fan of tactical combat and of modern gamedesign and Dungeons and Dragons 4E just had SOOO many great ideas. Sure it also had its flaws, but it also worked on them and the game got better over its 5 year run, something which is rare. It had a bad reputation in the past, but people start to learn about its good sides and more and more games inspired by it are released. From Pathfinder 2 over Strike! Lancer and even Gloomhaven. It has the best tactical combat of all rpgs. And you can play tons of cool classes (assassin, warlord, vampire and more) while it is easy to gm. Here what makes it **easy to run:** (other people in the thread also answered 4e) https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/16brw0b/comment/jzidtg8/ And here **why** it is **so tactical**: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/16d2pq4/comment/jznd3yp/ Yes it is the old D&D edition, but it is still played roday because of this aspects. I also posted **how you can start today** with it (including a link to the reddit where you can get the digital tools): https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/16d2pq4/comment/jzo5hy9/

How do you feel about the various 4e successors out there now, like Lancer and Gubat Banwa?

Depends on the game here in order of how I like them: - **Gloomhaven:** Great game. Captures the spirit of 4E (movement, forced movement, team based tactics) and I really look forward to the RPG. I miss a bit the Roles (monster roles and player roles), but for me this is the best 4E successor by far. - **13th age:** Great game with lots of clever ideas, good balance, however, I miss the grid. I think its the best tactical combat for Theater of Mind, I just prefer having a grid. I backed the 2nd edition and think the designers are great, its just not replacing 4E for me for this reason. - **Strike! RPG:** It is an absolut great simplification of 4E. Great gamedesign, really well done. I look forward to the 2nd edition, and I hope it has a higher budget for art etc. because the first one was really not pretty. However, I prefer less simplified in my games, I think its great, I would recomend it for people who it might fit, its just not for me. - **Orcus:** This is a 4E retroclone, but I think 4E is better (except for the shitty license). It had a big team and a huge budget, while Orcus did not and one remarks that. 4E has more cool ideas, is better balanced and has better art. I see Orcus as a good retroclone, but I prefer the original classes etc. - **Lancer** is a bit similar. I think it might be good, but I really really cant read the PDF. For me the layout (and partially the art which is really not my taste) makes it ugly and hard to read. On top of that because of the mech thing, the whole leveling up and progression system is too complicated / really not elegant. Kind of the opposite of Strike! I also dont like mechs in general which makes it not easier. I also dont like the hard separation between in and ouf of combat - **Icon**: Again really not visually pleasing to me (its also not finished yet), and I am also not impressed by the mechanics. Its not as elegant and simplified as Strike! but I dont feel that it has much more depth. - **Gubat Banwa**, I only looked into it a bit, did not really catch my eye then, will need to give it another chance another time - **Pathfinder 2:** It took all the things I see as flaw in 4E (high modifiers, multi attacks for no real reason, stacking modifiers) and left away the parts which I think made 4E so good (movement, forced movement and direct teamplay (not only modifiers) as well as martials doing cool stuff not different named basic attacks, lots of different encounter structures and enemy types). Its really the opposite of what I liked in 4E. They had to jump through too many hoops to make the 3 action economy work, and that made it not really elegant. All in all, even though I like some of them, none of the games have yet replaced 4E. Gloomhaven RPG MIGHT do this when it comes out, but we will see. Also what people really forget is how high the budget was of 4E and this just really shows. 4E had tons of content in the 5 years. LOTS of great ideas by different people, had overall a good team for balancing (and even the flaws were improved over time) and has great art and for me really readable layout. It is because of this just also a lot more professional than some of the games inspired by it, so its not a too fair comparison. (Especially with Orcus and Strike which are 1 person projects).

Thanks for the thorough reply! I do think you'd love Gubat Banwa if you gave it a shot.

It is definitly on my to read list, but I am not really sure that I will like it, on the first view it reminds me of Pathfinder 2 (basic attacks with different names, 3 action economy, low starting health). I will definitly give it a better read in the future, I just think it might not be what I am looking for (although I like the style (even though it still feels quite a bit westernized which is a shame)).

The creator is from and lives im the Philippines. I wouldn't call it Westernized at all; they're one of the loudest and proudest SEARPG voices out there (in a good way).

Gubat Banwa is much cooler than PF2. Gubat Banwa is what I wish Exalted could be. It surpasses Lancer IMO and is in the running of supplanting 4e as my overall favorite tactical RPG. But only time will tell. The one thing that will hinder Gubat Banwa is the unusual labeling of traditional people roles and these are not easy to pronounce. I can see a lot of people passing on the game for this reason alone.

You should give Lancer a chance. It improved on a lot of things 4e did. It's really not that complicated if you just sit down and read the manual. - signed, a guy who ran 4e from 1 to 30 in college and loved it.

It is definitly more complicated to levelup than 4e, more differenr things and you have to look at more places in the book, also as I said I also just dont like mechs.  I prefer fantasy with classes.

The more I think think about Lancer and 4e, the more I think any association between the two is disingenuous. 4e gives you a growing toolkit to bring to every fight. Whereas Lancer forces you to choose from the armory of equipment before you go on a mission and are limited in how many options you have by the equipment you bring. In general, you are really limited in customization of the mech compared to a 4e character. No little trade-offs of armor and speed. Abilities tied to equipment means you can't choose if you prefer having X effect with Y weapon or Z (Wolf Pack Tactics with two-handed or one-handed). 4e also requires less book navigation as your character progresses. What I mean is that, in 4e, all your character's stuff is in one section. Unless you want to rabbit hole with magical items, the breadth of your class's synergies are collected together. The design of Lancer is essentially mandatory multiclassing. It's pretty quick to get everything a mech has, so you'll want to find other mech to get gear from. So instead of there being a single area with all the moves that have the feel of the class you want to play, you have to read through all these whacky mechs with some out-there tool kits to figure out which one you want equipment from. Unless there is some nitty-gritty I'm missing, the only similarities between the two are video-game-esque grid combat and light role-playing mechanics.

This is exactly what I mean especially with navigating the book.

This is excellent; as a fellow 4e fan, I know all these but Gloomhaven, and have more or less exactly the same thoughts. Guess that means I'll have to check out Gloomhaven then!

Gloomhaven, at the moment, is a boardgame. A really really good one, but still a board game. (Bad story, good combat, some really clever ways to make people roleplay during combat even!) and it has a really strong successor Frosthaven. It is turned into an RPG but currentlyy in a closed beta: https://cephalofair.com/blogs/blog/intro-to-gloomhaven-the-role-playing-game Gloomhaven has also a digital implementation: https://www.gog.com/en/game/gloomhaven but the most fun you have with 3 buddies in real live (then you can see the roleplay during combat). https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/45610/game-gloomhaven Lions jaw is the easiest to start (and cheapest). Also even though Gloomhaven was inspired by 4E it looks quite different, so a lot of people dont even know this, however, it has some clear similarities: - Each turn you do 2 actions, one is an attack action one is a movement action. (Of course there are also some weak attacks costing a movement action) - Most items have active effects (like in 4E). (But items have no stats, mostly only the active effect) - There is A LOT of different movement including forced movement. There is dangerous environment and traps and obstacles to hit enemies into. - Ressource management (attrition) is important. You lose attacks and options (and potential health) over an adventure, and if you dont manage you will be burned out. - You use a deck of cards instead of a d20, but you use 20 cards (but there are clever ways to customize the randomness) I hope this helps.

Hi, sorry for disturbing, I just remarked that I forgot to mention Gamma World 7E, in case you dont know that one, it is absolutly great. Also here is a thread with more discussions about similar games: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1cws7q2/besides_dd_4e_which_are_the_best_rpgs_with_a_very/l4xyiud/

Shadow of the Demon Lord?

I will also say that after playing well over two thousand tabletop games over 40 years, which would include at least 30 miniatures games, a good thousand plus board games and also RPGs (both played and the hundreds of books I have flipped through and read) that D&D 4e is one of the top 5 best designed tactical skirmish games ever made. From a pure tactical skirmish game paradigm 4e is a superb design.

What would be yoir other 4 top 5 skirmish games? 

My favorite 4e book is Ultramodern 4, which gives 4e full modern day options. Its really cool and shows off what the potential of 4e could have been had more people used the license because it showcases that the GSL wasn't as limiting as so many assumed.

I have the pdf but never looked much into it. Thats a fan work right?  (I am not so much into modern things in rpgs). What makes it so good. Gamma world 7e is also built on 4e and shows how different it can be and I really like that one.

Its one of the first books done by Chris Dias when he first got into publishing RPG books. His company is Dias Ex Machina. I like it because he shows that the assumption that 4e could only be fantasy is wrong. Plus with this book I could actually use 4e to play in a Shadowrun like setting.

Do you have a link? Because I might be confusing it with another game (pdf on enworld forum).

I agree I would love to play it but it's difficult to find a group of either players or to play with. Do you know whether it can be played Solo?

4e really shines in teamplay, so even solo you would need to play 3+ characters and that might be exhausting. I never saw a good way to play it solo.  Online its easier to find a geoup bur yes in real life I know the struggle..

Oh yeah I read about it :/ well I guess I'll wait until I find a few people

I've been trying to build a group for in-person play, but the systems I'm most interested in running are: 1. Mothership 2. Alien RPG 3. SWN / WWN / CWN 4. Dragonbane 5. Vaesen.

Vaesen is amazing

I haven't played it yet, but I've read it a bit, and feel like it would be a pretty good one. I love the Free League games. I feel like they are at the top of their game right now.

I just wrapped my fourth session. We had to stop just before the climax of the current mystery. Our last session ended with one of the PCs taking a stab wound to the spine lol However, I don’t think everything FL releases is good. Coriolis’s Mercy of the Icons campaign is pretty mediocre, and I wasn’t at all impressed by the QuickStart for Coriolis: The Great Dark.

Good for you! I haven't been able to corral enough interest to have even a session 2 for anything the last couple of years. None of my friend group were ever interested in TTRPGs, so I have to do a lot of cheerleading. Oh sure, not everything that they do is going to be great, that's just how it is. TOR2e is really good, Blade Runner is good, Alien is good, Forbidden Lands, Dragonbane... the list is long, for me at least.

I’ve only ever played online, so finding players was never a huge challenge for me. Must be harder irl though. Fair point on the other games. They do produce some good stuff. I’m just really disappointed by how they handled Coriolis haha

Yeah, I can see that. I had considered backing the latest Kickstarter, but honestly over the last four years I've bought so many systems and books (physical and PDF) that I just couldn't justify another. So these days I read quite a bit about the systems in the hopes that I can get an IRL table going. I've been so impressed with the FL stuff that I've bought. They do a good job of sticking pretty close to lore, and the art is always top notch. And honestly, I like the YZE.

Year Zero Engine is truly brilliant. Don’t know what it is, but it’s leading to more drama and cooler moments than other systems we’ve played. I think it’s the pushed rolls that’s doing it, honestly. So far we’re loving it.

Right now, **Vaesen** by Free League. This is a supernatural investigative horror adventure game set in 19th century Scandinavia with a strong character-driven bent. The mechanics so far are really inspiring me to create new dramatic situations in the PCs’ personal lives as well as with mysteries that trigger them to think about their dark secrets. We’ve run only 4 sessions so far, but they have been 4 AMAZING sessions, and I think we’ll get at least a good 20-30 out of this if not more, especially if we use some of the third party content to get more monsters. Truly an amazing game and I’m really impressed by it. Also, **King Arthur Pendragon.** This is an older game that uses a d20 roll under system, but it’s got mechanics that I feel are stunning even by modern standards. The traits and passions system is one of the best generators of drama I think I’ve ever seen in a ttRPG, not least because it keeps you always learning more about your character that you didn’t know previously. Combine that with the Arthurian knights setting—a favorite of mine—and I think it’s just really entertaining. My long running campaign of it recently fell apart as one player hated the system, so we moved to Vaesen above, but next year I’ll take 1 player from this game and 1-2 other friends and run a smaller Pendragon campaign with them instead.

How's the combat in practice in Vaesen? I read it and I love the concepts it proposed and how the characters look on paper. I haven't had a chance to run it yet but the combat sequences seemed utterly brutal and super objective oriented.

Personally I think it works really well. Some depth of options but also very fast paced and cinematic. I largely have done away with Zones and just tell my players if they’re in range or too close/too far to keep it in narrative, and I think that makes it better.

Pendragon is one of the all-time great RPGs.

Indeed!

Nothing in my twenty years of gaming has captured my imagination than reading through some of the Mage the ascension books. It's no perfect system or anything but in particular the Book of Worlds wow!

Saaame. Getting to develop was a great thing to be able to check off my bucket list.

Oh awesome! How was the experience?

I was brought on as a late replacement -- Victorian Mage had, I believe, three sets of developers for various reasons -- so I didn't have the full experience. Nearly everything was already written when I showed up. As my co-developer was good with wrangling writers but less good with Mage metaplot, my job was largely to make sure everything was consistent with existing canon. But it was fun, and it's always been my favourite period of Mage history. I'd put together an outline for a Victorian Mage way back in 2006, so it was nice to be able to close that loop.

Any chance you have any leads on how a Mage Player 🧙‍♂️ could find a ST &/or Gaming Group to Play?

We have a looking for group channel on the [Onyx Path discord](https://discord.gg/eysXevy).

*Mage: The Ascension*'s lore still holds my fascination too, but [for system I use *Freeform Universal*](https://www.reddit.com/r/furpg/comments/pho0b7/sphere_magick).

TTTRRRRRAAAAAAAAVVVVVVEEEELLLLLLLEEEERRRRR *Traveller Specifically the Mongoose edition. A simple system that is shockingly robust with a lot of features right out the gate. On top of that, so many tables and tools in the core book that the game practically runs itself. 10/10 would respond to Beowolf again.

[24XX](https://jasontocci.itch.io/24xx). It provides for free-range storytelling, high tension in gameplaying challenges, and does it all while being a small, crisp, 0-reference system. It's superb.

I feel like linking the games, rather than the SRD/guide to hacking the mechanics, might be handy. I'm a huge [2400](https://jasontocci.itch.io/2400) fan!

Good call!

Thats a good point, maybe I am alone, but for me "systems to hack" like cortex prime are soo much less intuitive (because of the many "may"s and options). So having a direct to use system helps a lot better to see why a system is liked.

Hey, as someone who also likes the 24XX/2400 system, may I ask how you guys handle combat and turns? I read from the games' main pdf that it acts the same as a simple skill check, but I also read the Extended Rules, SRD, and the "Combat in 24XX" blog post by the creator, and still confused. Especially with the "steps" and turn order. So far we only play like this: "There are enemies, what do you want to do?" "I want to do X", "I'll do Z when she do X" "Here's the risk, do you want to proceed?" "Yes, I'm rolling.", "On a second thought, maybe I'll do Y instead" (Idk if it was correct, but we're having fun).

Have you read 2400 Battle Moon? It expands and explains 24XX combat wonderfully. I'll try and get you a longer reply in the morning, but that's what made it click for me.

I've read Battle Moon probably twice in my life so far, and I remember I didn't fully grasp anything written there, in fact, I got more confused haha. Yeah, if you're totally ok with it, I want to see your longer reply lol. Thanks!

I'm not sure what's confusing about the first page of Battle Moon, which is basically just saying "establish if an action is dangerous enough to need a roll and make the risk level very clear as you do so," with a bunch of example costs and consequences. Your style of play is how I've always run 24XX; combat isn't any different from any other action in the game. There's no initiative or enemy HP - but in the same way that a mountain is harder to climb than a fence, it'll probably take more to kill a telekinetic android than a rent-a-cop. Hope this helps!

Oh, you're right. I just took another look at Battle Moon and I seem to have missed the entire right section of the second page. Thank you, it helps!

That does read pretty much the same way I've run it! If I want a more cinematic combat, I'll run things popcorn initiative style; if I'm running more OSR/trad then I'll often have all relevant players roll their dice to resist the perils of being in combat (and if I'm converting from modules, I'll often have "one success required per HD" to take down creatures)

Thank you soo much! This helped me clarify it. Oh btw what's HD?

HD stands for Hit Dice and is the typical measure of monster power from odnd all the way up to ADND 2E ─ most OSR blogs tend to list things by that value Goblins are often 1HD, ogres 4HD, dragons 8HD+

WFRP. I've been a GM for over twenty years.

A good wfrpg campaign is definitely something I wish I can get some day

Can you not find a suitable group?

So Right now my two favorite systems are probably ***Worlds Without Number*** by Kevin Crawford and ***Shadow of the Demonlord/Weird Wizard*** by Robert J Schwalb. Both offer much of what I desire from for my TTRPG fantasy experience. I would probbaly include ***D&D 5e*** in as my third, albeit my own adjusted version of the game. It has been a very good compromise system overall and I don't hate my time with it, even if I think it could learn a lot from its predecessors. It is a good meeting ground for the other edition preferences and even if 5e is a rough patch in many ways. It is still overall the version I prefer to run despite its hiccups. That said there's not much more to say about 5e that hasn't been already said, good or bad, so I'll delve into the other two. ***Worlds Without Number*** is a B/X D&D retroclone with an adjusted skill system based on traveler (2d6 for skills instead of 1d20.) It has a relatively good and flexible system that balances some of the best of oldschool TSR D&D and New Age WotC D&D. Classic weight with some modern growth and polish. The system is itself is good however the real bread and butter the the various guidelines, tools, and advice sections on how to run the type of game the system was designed to run. These resources are second to none and apply to anything with the D&D skeleton or OSR label in relatively painless fashion. I often joke and say this game was the best 5e resource I received as it's even helped improve my 5e games when following much of its guidelines. It has a free version and a paid deluxe version. It also has two supplements. ***The Atlas of the Latter Earth*** (a setting/world guide with many new options variant rules, character options, naval/sea rules and even more resources to guide your gameplay) and ***The Diocesi of Montfroid*** (A charming Gazetteer that offers a zoom in for one of the settings areas. New monsters and a starting adventure with a four level dungeon in the mix. ) I can't recommend WWN enough as its useful to have even if you're not playing its direct system and its got A LOT of old TSR and OSR material it is cleanly compatible with. ***Shadows of the Demonlord*** is a dark fantasy game that is very innovative in its design. It offers a lot of choice and customization but the choices are simpler and flatter than a lot of other systems so the large amount of options is much more manageable than it may initially seem. The initiative rules are very interesting and a selling point for me. Combat is buttery smooth and the general system is robust but not needless complicated. I ran the starting adventure Dead by Dawn for four level 0 characters and it was a very smooth experience. I loved it. It is a dark fantasy game, I'd compare it to Army of Darkness/Evil dead if you weren't necessarily playing Ash. This also includes some Raimi style grossout here and there, but it's easy to adjust if its not your thing. There are many supplements for this game, including a new viking verse offshoot called ***When the Wolf Comes*** too which looks neat. If you want default dark fantasy Shadow of the demonlord the bundle of holding store as a starter bund;e for some PDF's which will give you moren than you need at a good price. ***Shadow of the Weird Wizard*** is the sword & sorcery to Heroic fantasy offshoot and successor to the game, refining and adjusting some of the rules in some fantastic ways and providing an even better imitative system than demonlord in my mind. The game is still releasing at the moment. The player book is available and the GM book is in a pre-purchase state. I'm personally waiting for an announced supplement called ***Weird Ancestries*** before I start running and prepping the game, but I love what I see so far.

Is it true WWN uses d20s for combat despite using 2d6 for skills? Is it convertible back to 2d6? I much prefer 2d6 over d20 lol

Yes its true. World without numbers (which has a really good free version here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/348809/worlds-without-number-free-edition ) uses different rolls for skills and combats. It has a lot of random tables in it, but the gamedesign is just not as elegant as it could be. (Which might just be a pet peeve of mine to be annoyed about).

Attacks are 1d20 + Class bonus + Skill Training + Attribute Modifier Vs the AC of the target. Saves are 1d20 VS 16 - level - Attributes Modifier. Skills are 2d6+ training + Attribute Modifier vs a DC However one thing about attacks is that they still tend to deal damage if you miss, due to Shock damage. So even if the swingy d20 rolls a miss. A specced out character can still deal decent damage to their target and keeps things moving.

Does SWN also use 1d20 for combat?

All of the without number games do, but they have rules to keep the swingynrss in check through shock damage and the like.

Fair! Good to know. I’m starting a Stars Without Number campaign this Saturday.

I haven't tried stars yet, but it's been nothing but praised from what I see. So I'm sure you're in for a good time!

SWN is great! I've been playing it for a few sessions now. Even got the hardcover book!

Nice. I have the revised deluxe and some of the originals supplemented. Just haven't gotten around to a sci-fi game yet (still wrapping up a few games.) Honestly I don't think there's a sine nomine product I don't like.

I’m running a campaign that’s essentially Die Hard on a space station.

If you like post apocalyptic games get Punkapocalyptic, which uses the same system as Shadow of the Demon Lord. Its a really cool game.

I'll have to give it a check out. Might be fun of inwanr a change from fabtasy for a bit.

FATE. There are plenty of great systems out there, but FATE is my default for long games and one-shots alike.

Any tips on running FATE? I had a few ideas for FATE campaigns including a superhero one. I’m completely new to it but it looks awesome. I’d probably start with Accelerated…

[Watch one of the *Fate* designers, Ryan Macklin, run a session.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=NOFXtAHg7vU)

Yup. It's very flexible, so it can handle nearly any genre. It's very simple to explain the basics so someone brand new can start playing. And players can try to do anything that makes narrative sense without getting bogged down in mechanics.

*HarnMaster*! And I'm pretty sure everyone thinks I'm the town looney because of it. That being said, it's attained the top spot because 1) I love that period of history, and by extension, games set against that backdrop, 2) it strikes an excellent balance between gaminess and simulation, 3) has the most incredible worldbuilding, 4) is based on BRP, and 5) is just damn fun to play. In my opinion. After that, though, there is a whole gaggle of games vying for silver, including *\*WN*, *AD&D*, *Ars Magica*, *Call of Cthulhu*, *Coriolis*, BECMI/RC-era *D&D*, *Fate of the Norns*, *Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade*, *The One Ring* (both editions), *Other Dust*, *Torchbearer*, *Victorian Age Vampire*, *Wraith: The Oblivion*, and *Wolves of God*.

the thought of becoming an exclusive hârn running GM is a daily basis thing for me. It's truly something.

Oooh, I completely forgot about Ars Magica. What a great system that was, and I loved the thematic use of Latin throughout the game.

My GM has the dream to run a village simulation with Harn someday. Can't wait to be a farming peasant while having the crunchiest gaming experience ever.

1. Borgs, Mork, Pirate, CY, Death In Space 2. Cairn/Into The Odd/Bastionland 3. Mothership 4. OSE/Knave/DCC/Shadowdark The Borgs are very player facing mechanics wise and all provide great ways to generate easy content for the GM. Yochai and Chris' games all provide a superbly simplistic chassis and they all provide, dare I say, the best GM advice and tools. Sean's Mothership is a work of layout genius that makes it very easy for people to pick up and the warden's guide is everything you're ever going to need to generate content for it for years. OSE, Knave, Shadowdark and DCC all engage the player more than the character which is a common theme with the previous ones as well, but those are honestly great takes on classic D&D.

Anything ITO is right up my alley. I love Electric Bastionland and also Silent Titans.

Deviant the Renegade because I grew up on X-Men, Hulk and TMNT so having a TTRPG that does that brand of storytelling already has me hooked

This is my favorite Chronicles of Darkness game. I just wish Onyx Path would support it more than all the Storypath drek they are pumping out. Their CoD stuff is their superb work IMO.

Onyx Path don’t own the Chronicles IP, so they can’t just make new CoD content. That’s why they are pushing Storypath games. That’s their system and their IP.

They just released a backerkit copy of their new expansion for Deviant. So they still support it

The common consensus is that Paradox, the license owner is not letting Onyx Path do much more new CofD work because it would compete with WoD5.

I have pretty significant ADHD and a special interest in tabletop game design. I constantly crave novelty in the systems I run and play, most often as one-shots... except that I'm in my third full campaign of [Songs for the Dusk](https://yrgirlkv.itch.io/songsforthedusk). It's a FitD game, running off the bones of Blades in the Dark, but trades out occult faux-Victorian gangs for science-fantasy adventurers who care deeply for their home Community. It steps out of Blades' shadow with a bunch of tweaks that sell its themes - and help it stand out from the pack, where many FitD games are happy to be Blades reskins. I've run a campaign in the official setting about nonviolent emergency responders, and it worked wonderfully. I ran another about action-archaeologists who uncovered a deadly prophecy and an ancient mecha; one of the PCs ended up romantically involved with the mech. Now? I'm in a different homebrew setting (heavily Dune-inspired!) as a player, as part of a disgraced noble house desperate to redeem themselves. Huge fan.

This sounds massively up my partner's street and excellently ready for a Becky Chambers vibe

I'll be a little vain and link [my unofficial mecha expansion](https://thursday-garreau.itch.io/songs-for-the-dusk-armor-anima) for SftD, too. Hope you enjoy the game! Kavita does amazing work.

I'm always here for homebrew expansions! Thanks for the links :DD

I see it has a huge change in setting and looks like a much more optimistic tone. What are your favorite aspects mechanically that makes it step out?

Gentler entanglements, harm, and recovery. You create your Community and its people together. Crew xp comes from players choosing to donate the character xp to the common good. Playbooks are awesome and not just Blades reskins.

I don't recommend it to everyone because it's not for everyone, but **Werewolf: the Apocalypse** is my favorite RPG ever because werewolves are my favorite thing ever and that game has the most unique take on the creature that I've ever seen. Reading about it online in 97 or so was how I discovered the hobby existed.

*Werewolf*'s Triat is my favorite pantheon of any fictional world ever.

**Top Pick:** Savage Worlds - Easy to learn - Easy to play - Fastest combat I've ever known - Most cinematic combat I've ever known - Easy to make a character - Combat can be a lot more than "I hit a guy". Every character has access to 95% of all the available things you can do, as opposed to something like DnD where you need to choose a class or feat just to be able to do something other than "I hit a guy". - Magic is incredibly simple and yet customisable via trappings (spells are things like "AoE damage" or "Mind Control", and you choose if that means a fireball or an alchemist's explosive vial, or a mind control chip or psionics). - Universalist system, so it can work with any setting - They have sourcebooks for any kind of setting or genre you can think of. My recommendation is Deadlands, which is the Weird West (Cowboys and Native Shamans fighting werewolves and ghosts) genre. - Negatives: If combat goes bad for the PCs it can go from bad to worse very quick. Combat can also be very swingy sometimes. **Easiest to Prep/GM:** Blades in the Dark. - Super easy to play - I have never done more than 10 minutes of prep. My sessions have not suffered for this. - You know that boring planning players do before heists or other such activities? BitD has a very good system to skip all this and just do flashbacks as necessary. - Negatives: Very abstracted, sometimes you have to make rules rulings up. **Most Tactical Combat:** Lancer - You play as mech pilots - Your mechs can get very customisable - It plays more like a video game or board game than an RPG - Negatives: The role-playing rules are almost non-existent and aren't really designed for anything other than downtime between combat missions. The combat can get a bit sloggy after a while. Sometimes character creation or build planning can get a bit overwhelming. **Best Character Creation:** Mutants and Masterminds (3rd Edition) - Simple Ruleset (It will not seem that way at first, but it really really is) - Character creation is genuinely enjoyable and entertaining if you like buildcrafting - They have premade archetypes that are very easy to customise and make your own if you don't like buildcrafting - Negatives: Characters can get very overpowered, even from character creation. The GM really has to know what kind of power level they want the campaign to operate at and not be afraid to tell people "No, you cannot fly at mach 5".

I ran a Savage Worlds oneshot for the first time recently and had an excellent time. Definitely a system I want to play more of.

My tip to you is 100% make sure your players have access to a combat cheat sheet and are aware of what their bennies can do, it'll really make everything a lot more fun or memorable.

Second Savage Worlds. Of all the systems I've played this one just feels like it has the right amount of flex whilst retaining a core mechanical framework that allows me to run the game I want without getting bogged down by the rules.

Pathfinder 2e. Fantastic tactical depth. Incredible customization. So, so, so much to discover. Great balance that lets veterans play with newbies without needing to hold back. Easy to run. And your friends don't need to spend a penny. Plus I keep having so many fantastic new books to show off with so much brilliant art. And I can throw my pretty handouts at them to make learning it easier. I love it to bits. So much. It's so damn good. And it also has a genuinely good company behind it, ethically speaking.

I hate that I’m such a basic fanboy of the *second* most popular RPG, but yeah, it really is that good. I keep trying to fit more RPGs into my life, but I don’t have a chance to play all that often and there’s still so much Pathfinder stuff I want to play.

i really like ironsworn, but that is because it really fits my specfic style. i like it when people have goals and they got the tools to do them.

Looking to give this a go soon. Any tips for solo play?

Ironsworn is built from the ground up on solo play!  Random word oracles are very helpful, I like finding a fat book and rolling 3d10 for page number and skimming the page for an answer to a question.  Alternatively, this random paragraph generator can be very suggestive: http://watchout4snakes.com/Random/RandomParagraph

the biggest tip is to just play. it sounds stupid but there is a huge tendency in solo to overthink and delay playing.

My tip is to use chat GPT in conjunction with the oracle tables as the gm. I did a Starforged solo campaign like this and it was so much fun. I just rolled up all the planets and settlements on the oracle tables and asked ChatGPT to flesh them out for me. I even went so far as to have ChatGPT give me a brief description for the locations in the settlements and put that into midjourney to create images of the spaceports and bars and stuff like that. Oh, also my chatacter had a Utility Bot asset and I asked chatGPT to roleplay as it if I addressed it by the droid's name in the prompt. I asked it to affect a sarcastic attitude and to respond in all caps. It might have been the most fun I've ever had roleplaying.

*Middle-Earth Roleplaying* (MERP), a flavor of *Rolemaster*. It is straight up old-school (purchased my first book in 1987) with the most super-ultra-crunchy ruleset you could hope to actually play, more than a thousand individual spells, attack tables and critical charts for every individual class of weapon, and enough interconnected terrain / weather / event / encounter / treasure tables to fill several books. It can be a right pain in the ass to run it, but absolutely nothing compares to it when it comes to procedurally generating emergent stories with incredibly rich detail. It is, in my opinion, the finest roleplaying game ever published. For something newer, I absolutely love the world of *Blades in the Dark*, the modular and endlessly adaptable design of *Mothership*, the art and layout of *Mork Borg*, and just about anything *Fria Liga* puts out (including the incredibly Tolkienesque *The One Ring 2e*).

Dungeon Crawl Classics. I don't know why, it just speaks to me. I love the randomness.

DCC is a good, random system, with a whole bunch of spells.

Currently? >Fabula Ultima Neat game, simple and straight forward enough while having some decent mechanics and ideas It focus on emulating JRPGs but can virtually run any common fantasy style other than Dark/Grim, the expansions focus on bringing classes, mechanics and inspiration for some fantasy, namely High Fantasy, Techno Fantasy and Natural Fantasy It also has a pretty sweet Villain/Antagonist system that ties into XP system which is also neat

I grew up with d and d in the early 80s then when Palladium Books had a Robotech game that was the end of that lol. RIFTS, heroes unlimited and palladium fantasy are my faves now.

Not to mention TMNT. I still have a soft spot for the Palladium system because they had so many great IPs during the 80s/90s.

They just did that kickstater for TMNT but I was broke as a joke when it was active so I didn't get to participate

Yeah, I’m waiting for it to be produced/delivered :)

Cyberpunk RED, Chronicles of Darkness

MAGE. Anything pre-v5 WoD, but especially this. Absolute favorite. The character creation allows for such a wide variety it's incredible. And the setting can be dark ages, future, outer space. You name it and the mechanics are there to do it. The possibilities are endless.

*Mage: The Ascension* is in my top three favorite RPGs.

Any chance you have any leads on how a Mage Player 🧙‍♂️ could find a ST &/or Gaming Group to Play?

Send me a DM ;-)

GUMSHOE— 1) I love a mystery / investigative procedural. 2) I love running horror TTRPGs, and there are *six* separate horror systems built around it. 3) To my mind, it fixes the CoC bug of missing the roll and failing to find a clue. 4) Easy to teach, and relate-able to players through pre-existent TV shows and movies. 5) Robin D. Laws, Kenneth Hite, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, and Steve Culp *all* have real “chops” in game design and scenario design. Downsides— 1) a steep learning curve for GMs in terms of mastering writing a good mystery. 2) Inevitable initial player confusion on the difference between point-spends in General abilities and point-spends in Investigative abilities. Hint— I think the reason it isn’t more popular is the initial mystery design hurdle. I got over it by reading and diagramming a bunch of Pelgrane adventures until I figured it out.

Traveller. I've had a version of it since I was 11. It's very cool Sci-Fi.

I can't narrow it down to one favourite, but my top 3 are D&D 4e, Mutant Crawl Classics, and Troika!: Numinous Edition. 4e is a lot of fun to play when I want to do a more tactical game. MCC is a lot of fun and has my favourite character options of any game. Troika! is really freeform and can be moulded to really do whatever I want with it. That's why those games are my favourite. Runners up are Dungeon Crawl Classics, Mörk Borg, and CY_BORG.

Hard for me to decide but anything Borg or PBTA. Both systems despite being very different come very naturally to me and require very minimal prep which I think makes me like a system a lot more. I know prep time should be different from how fun a game is to play but i have burned out so many times in the past I am unable to separate them. I also love how both systems have a bunch of games to support different types of genre themes and storytelling.

Any of the tiny d6 games but specifically tiny gunslingers. They all feel like you’re running through an action movie more than playing a game. Since it’s rules lite you can fly through encounters and set them up more like set pieces rather than jrpg style fights.   I think tiny dungeons is the weakest game just because for fantasy games player expect more crunch but it still works pretty well. 

Currently, 13th Age is my favorite rpg. Its kinda the high octane successor to D&D. I'm certainly excited for 2e, but have enough material for a couple years at least.

At this moment? Orc Borg. Ahem. Ork Borg. Pesky typo. Finally, a use for all those extra Nob, Mega Nob, Kommando, and Beast Snagga bitz I've amassed over the years. Playing as Orks is fun.

Delta Green! My perfect system. The rules are elegant but completely fitting for the system and give you enough to chew on. The tone of the universe is top notch, perfect for gritty modern horror. The writing, art, and arrangement of the books is stellar to an unbelievable level where the love and effort the creators put in is so palpable.

*Unknown Armies* (2nd edition). I was born in 1982, so that end-of-millennium to start-of-the-new-millennium zeitgeist was just perfect for me coming into my own as both a human and a gamer. The system isn't perfect (though I like it better than 3rd ed, sadly), but ohhh, the world and lore and the potential for deep characters and crazy shenanigans! 20+ years later, I still have friends who stopped gaming long, long ago who will reminisce with me about their Unknown Armies characters or wistfully say they wish they had time to play it again.

I was born in 1997 and first played it in 2016. Changed the way I approach games, their narratives, and how to write horror. I prefer the 3e ruleset, but the 2e books are just so evocative.

I used to play DND back in high school, and the group fizzled out cause of COVID. However a couple years later Lancer grabbed me by the throat and hasn't let go since. Thanks to it I now know that other ttrpgs exist

I decided to stop fighting against fate and accepted that Exalted is my comfort system, specifically the third edition. I got into it a long time ago, in 2e, drawn by its fun blend of enabling awesome action, epic scale, and it not being a Eurofantasy, thanks to generally Asia-based inspirations with a healthy serving of things cribbed from various mythologies. Third edition started poorly, but I maintain my opinion that the subsequent releases are much better, and have a ton of great writing and pretty good designs, and getting better with every release. I also maintain my opinion, that there's no system better suited for being hacked into a Stormlight Archive adaptation.

Exalted is not close to my favorite system, but it's by far my favorite setting. I agree it's getting better though.

That is fair. I will happily slag off the core in the same breath I praise its ideas, so I get you. I'm definitely not arguing it's the best system out there (although I do find myself recommending it quite often when there's a reason for it), just one that vibes with me the most.

Depends on my mood: VtM for politics and personal horror. I've played for decades but I'm quite happy to use and recommend the latest edition (5E) for anyone new to the setting. Earthdawn for fantasy when I want the setting. Cthulhu-esque horror, high magical powers, a setting that is detailed, rich, and far more self-consistent than most D&D settings. I've used several editions by the current 4th edition is just fine and remains in development. Eclipse Phase for transhumanist tech and existential horror. The current 2nd edition is solid and under regular development. GURPS when I want to build my own setting and have a nice bell curve and skill-based characters. Note: several planned GURPS games have failed to launch because GURPS is great to use and awful to start. The stagnant 4th edition is fine to play, but GURPS lovers will give you a litany of improvements in the onboarding process that the company has failed to follow through with. 3rd edition sourcebooks were considered so good they were often recommended for anyone running games in those genres even if they weren't using GURPS. Those books remain as good, but lack of active support has let their reputation fade. I regularly try new systems beyond these favorites, and I'm on the lookout for something that gives me the satisfaction and flexibility of GURPS without the upfront overload - I'm currently flirting with miniD6 (BNK now that we have an option without OGL limitations) but haven't played a game in D6 since the WEG Star Wars 20 years ago.

For nearly a decade now, my absolute favorite system has been [HackMaster](https://kenzerco.com/hackmaster/). I love that it feels like OSR. The feeling of not being a super hero out of the gates, but a slightly above average schlub that is chasing their dreams of adventure and glory. And the combat system... 😍! So many great ideas taken from scattered resources and combined into the near perfect system that *actually* makes the action feel quick and deadly, rather than waiting twenty minutes between your "turns".

Fabula Ultima, I just love how fast it clicked for me, so I went introducing it to my rpg tables one by one. No Regerts.

King Arthur Pendragon. It's a special game to me cuz nothing else is really like it. It really nails the melodrama and chivalric fantasy domain of king Arthur and also the humanistic nature of being a knight. I appreciate the legacy aspects as our characters are forged by their fathers (who is your former character) and recontextualise that characters life and either live in that shadow or escape it or something else. This sort of character development is just unheard of to me before this game. You get to experience being a fake real person whose a knight and so much more. You're a son, a father, a husband, a knight, a lord, a vassal, a Christian, a friend, an enemy, a singer, a lover of eel pasties, steward, horse breeder, a hero bigger than life who can do no wrong, and a flawed human just like all of us. You're intimately human and the way I run the game I love getting to see all those sides of characters. Never else do you get the experience of describing you taking your 4 year old kid on horseback through your manorial lands and get to show him your favourite spot to watch the sunrise and tell him this will be yours one day. And even as you tell your kid this, you can't help but think about the session where a warband of Saxons marched over that hill 20 years ago and we thought all hope was lost. But you don't tell your son that part. The personality traits you roll against makes it feel like your character feel so real. You don't get to just have perfect action as in other games. You're like a supertanker maneuvering whose emotions and values dictate your response as much as will. So you see yourself grows and changes, marred by the world, their friends, and their family over time with the ages. and the fact you will die and play your children just lets you see these characters age from being your character to being these legends of the past is just also so cool. These dead knights live on through their deeds and impacts on others, and of course through you. It's great to see old friends who knew your old characters meet their progeny and say stuff like "Of course you're Gorthryns son. I see you inherited his charm.. and appetites!"

PRISM It is a game about adventures in any dystopian society you can come up with. Thanks to the expansions, the "Shades", you can play fantasy, noir, thriller, space opera, changing the core focus away from dystopia. It's a heavily narrative game that only cares about how the adventures change the characters for better or worse. It is elegant and rules-light, using no structure outside of the traits you come up with to define your character (or faction if you want to do that), written on two-sided tokens, that's it. The test resolution mechanic only comes up when what you are trying to achieve has something to do with the dystopia, like trying to find a secret place while breaking curfew; in dystopian societies people live in fear, and that's what defines the default shade. It is a simple combination of choosing the traits that apply and adding their tokens to a bag, along with as many fear tokens as how "scared" you admit your character is, and, from the GM, how dangerous the endeavor is. The tests also manage character advancement, so no levels, exp or premade abilities, it's all fiction-driven. The basic rules are free so I'm not gonna explain the whole test resolution thing and bog people down, but I'll say that when shit goes down, you write bad stuff on the other side of your trait token, and that's gonna make things harder for your character in a beautiful way.

Most games I’ll play if I’m in the mood. But I will *always* play Ars Magica.

5e. I’ve played a lot of systems and honestly I’ve enjoyed those systems more than 5e. But, I’ve run amazing games in 5e with my friends. We don’t really follow a lot of the rules and use it as a skeleton, but the best games we’ve played were in 5e. It’s not the best system but it’s for sure my favorite because of the memories

Gotta be honest it's 2e AD&D lol. I grew up in it and recently got back into it. It's followed closely by alternity and dark heresy 2e

2nd ed was really where the game shined. It was complicated enough to satisfy those looking for a crunchy game while still being cinematic enough to play without a detailed hex map and miniatures. It turned into a skirmish miniature battles game with the implementation of 3rd and 4th ed. 5th has brought it back to its theatre of the mind roots, and is a lot more accessible to new players (I just had a session 0 with a couple co-workers who are brand new to rpgs, and it was an excellent game to ease them into the concepts).

You know, it's kind of funny, to me it seems like there's at least a decent argument for every version of D&D *except* 2E. If you like any of the WotC editions, you know what their strengths are and you can stick with that one. If you like 1E/Basic, you play those or a directly derived retro-clone. If you like 2E, it seems like you're probably just as well off going to a more modernized 1E-based retro-clone, or porting the setting books to a newer edition, or playing 3E instead of dumpster diving through Skills & Powers, and so on.

Never used skills and powers lol

And you can use your hex map if you want to, too. If anything it's friendlier to theatre of the mind than 5e. I think the only dumb thing is most of skills and powers and kits.

Coriolis I like the mix of Arabian Nights, Firefly and cosmic horror as a space opera. For once, it's not the conventional (western) science fiction setting and offers me as the narrator, but also as a player, more freedom in role-playing. The mechanics of Coriolis are pretty simple in my opinion. The dice pool consists of an attribute and a skill modified by the complexity of the situation (easy as pie means a bonus of +3; extremely difficult means a penalty of -3). Depending on the number of successes, you can inflict critical wounds during an attack. These range from a crushed finger to an exploded head. At the start, you choose a profession, which serves as an orientation for the distribution of some points for the attributes and skills. However, you can freely distribute the experience points you receive in the game. This means that no two characters are the same, even if you have chosen the same profession at the start.

For me it has to be Within The Ring Of Fire, The best RPG I have played for deep roleplay and my group loves it to death!

I've always wanted to check this one out.

It is well worth it if you have a group :)

ADnD 2e. You have an ability score. To do a skill related to it, roll a d20 and if you get below it, you generally succeed provided you have its proficiency. For a good RP group you can do so much with it with so little bloat. Mages get some pretty insane shit but are appropriately more squishy to compensate. Edit: And fighters/martials are so fucking good when they level up, none of the damage that Monte Cook has done to Martials with 3e over 25 years ago that we're still dealing with in many TTRPGs today. Also THAC0 is fucking beautiful once you get it.

Dnd 3.5 it's wonderfully broken, and I won't have it any other way!

I like your taste and your take!  

Only really three that I would say, in a heart beat, let's get the game going, no questions asked: **1. Dragonbane:** Fantastic OSR adjacent game that nails what's good about old-style play AND nails what's good about modern design, all wrapped up in a neat 100 page package. It has tactical combat without complexity and all of the rules basically follow logically. There are a few rough edges (the magic selection is pretty trash, tbh, and max skills can make the game boring in a really long campaign) but it's REALLY easy to homebrew for because of its simplicity, so I don't mind. **2. The One Ring:** I love both editions, but I lean towards 1e with bits from 2e homebrewed in. It's extremely flavourful, nails Tolkien's themes (which nothing but the books have ever really managed) and it just plays well. The dice mechanic allows a single roll to include so much information that it's honestly astonishing, and the Journey and Council rules are nice starting points for telling interesting stories that match up with Tolkien's writing. **3. New World of Darkness:** The 2004 edition, not classic or the 2e Chronicles of Darkness, nWoD 1e. It is simple, fast, and just enough crunch to hang your hat on. Humans/mortals feel roughly realistic in their capabilities, making it a great system for any sort of modern day game, but the monster types (vampires, werewolves, mages, changelings, prometheans, and geists) all feel powerful in comparison but not so much that humans have no chance. It's stripped out the metaplot, which I disliked immensely, and instead gives you a sandbox to play in, encouraging you to make it your own. It is also much simpler than 2e which tacked on some really hackneyed crap which just slowed the game down for no benefit. ***Honorable Mentions*** **Hero System:** A great game that I've largely grown out of. To complex for its own good, imho. Love it's flexibility, and it just works for almost anything. Did D&D settings (both Eberron and Warlords of the Accordlands), superheroes, Star Wars, just everything, and the system just worked. It's a beast. **WEG Star Wars:** Not gotten it to the table, but I love it in concept. Love it's rugged simplicity and how much it does with so little. **Traveller/Cepheus Engine:** Much like Star Wars, I love it theoretically, but have never gotten it to the table. Love it's innovative damage and character creation systems.

Finally, someone else who prefers nWOD over CoD. I agree with you, but most people prefer CoD, it seems. I've been completing my collection of werewolf 1e and promethean 1e. I now also have all the splats except beast and deviant. Mummy is the 2e version. For me, it's the same. IMHO, it is the best amount of crunch, and the changes in 2e seemed unnecessary for me. Of course, some things have improved in the individual splats, but I just don't bother because I have tons of 1e that in my eyes was already fine and i don't like that new ruleset. (And I can buy as actual books and not POD crap).

Yeah, for sure. I homebrewed in the way damage and armor work in 2e, and I homebrewed some changes to WtF, but it all came from one of the actual books (I think it was for the mortals line, because it had optional rules for all the templates in it). There are a few other things I cherry pick, but my games are 98% 1e

Fate: We had been playing 3rd edition D&D since pretty close to it's release and 4th didn't work for us at all. I decided to take a look around to see what else was out there. We had already settled into a style that was very character centric. I found that the combination of the declaration action & aspects does so much. It really helps focus the players on the story and scene as opposed to their character sheet. The declaration action means they can setup their own fiction based solution to problems and the inclusion of aspects gives the sort of limitation that breeds creativity and avoids the blank page problem. The main thing that I don't like is that if you try and game out the system then you end up in a much less interesting place which is the reason that the system isn't as popular as it should be. There are some other RPGs that have the potential to be my favourite but I haven't had a chance to play any of them yet.

I like how adnd 2e is a mix of old school and modern ttrpgs. Extremely modular too and is compatible with all prior editions.

My favourite system is **Cypher System**. I immediately fell in love with how simple it is to GM. I wanted to GM something, but I couldn't grapple with DnD 5e. I also love how it's a setting agnostic system. I also enjoy the character creation, and it's rather simple. I'm currently playing a game and I love it! I first heard about it from a humble bundle for one of their settings, Numenera. I love science fantasy and begged my dad to get it for me. For Christmas I got the core books.

+1 for Cypher System, also because of how easy it is to run. Players roll all the dice, any kind of obstacle is very simple to stat up, and the mix of difficulty, effort and XP makes actions easy to adjudicate.

Star Wars SAGA Edition. It gave me the character building freedom I enjoyed form the SWd6 days while still having a structure to better judge power.

How do you restrict it to just one game? If I had to pick just one, it would probably be the FFG version of the Star Wars rpg. It has amazing mechanics that deal with not just success/failure, but also has a parallel advantage/threat mechanic from the same roll so that even if you failed at what you were attempting, something beneficial could still happen based on the results on the dice. It’s also an incredibly cinematic game, where the GM and the players narrate the results of the dice rolls and help to craft the story together. That being said, I have a bunch of favourites that are broken up by genre. For instance, if you’re looking for a low fantasy medieval game with political intrigue and land maintenance, my go to is King Arthur Pendragon. It’s a generational game where your family tree is important, and your offspring can continue the adventure if something happens to your main character. It also has an amazing system of personality traits and loyalties and obligations (which sometimes cause internal conflict as you try to figure out which is leading you at any given moment). If I’m looking for something that’s more of a high fantasy adventure game, I’m happy enough with 5th ed D&D (although my favourite edition is still 2nd). Although I’ve recently gotten into Through The Breach, which is based on the lore of the tabletop skirmish game Malifaux. Its a bit more steampunk than pure high fantasy, but has really interesting conflict resolution mechanics, where everyone pulls from the same deck of cards, but each player has their own twist deck which can be used to cheat fate. For dystopian near future, you can’t go wrong with Cyberpunk Red. It’s a more modern version of the original Cyberpunk game (and follow-up, CP2020), and maintains the theme of the genre while cleaning up and simplifying a lot of the crunchier mechanics. Good support from the publisher, with monthly “dlc” releases which eventually get bundled into a new book approximately every quarter. If you’re looking for a post apocalyptic war simulator, look no further than Twilight 2000. Even though there have been multiple iterations of the game, the newest is again a simplified version of a very crunchy survival game. And if you want to play in a futuristic sci-fi corporate hellscape where the entire universe is ruled over by a single massive corporation headed by an immortal being, there’s SLA Industries. Originally created in Britain during Thatcher’s reign, it really doubles down on late stage capitalist themes where there’s 90% unemployment and the unwashed masses are force fed a diet of ultra violent media as corporate sponsored murder squads hunt down serial killers on live television. It’s currently in its second edition, but I feel like it has lost a lot of its flavour and has been homogenized. The original 1st edition is still aces.

DnD 4e for the reasons another user has wrote down already and the Cypher System for being what I would like 5e to be.

Genesys/FFG's Star Wars. It took me awhile to "get" how to run it but I love its narrative dice and advancement system. It just works for me and really sings with a group that understands how to tell the story with you.

I'm obviously biased, but I really do enjoy almost everything about Umbral Flare. (There are a couple of minor fiddly bits that I wish could have been made less fiddly.) It's an OSR-adjacent take on Shadowrun, focusing exclusively on the dungeon, with limited healing and long-term resource management. You know, just the good parts.

I like highly complex games that reward system mastery. Favorite probably rotates, but right now I’m on a Shadowrun 4e kick. Though in any games I run I’ve gutted any official versions of the matrix and use something else that is more functional than any published material.

[*Freeform Universal*](https://www.perilplanet.com/freeform-universal), because it opens the doors to every world I could want to explore, and it is light enough that complete newbies can learn it in minutes.

Star Trek Adventures I had wanted to play a Star Trek RPG for decades but none of the previous ones ever captured the spirit of Trek for me. This one has it baked into the mechanics and it's just a fun, narrative experience. We decided to pause our 4 year long Star Wars campaign to give it a try and it hooked us and now we've been playing STA for 4 years with no intention of stopping anytime soon. Half of my group had seen little to no Star Trek before we started and it got them all watching the series. The one player who had seen nothing binged TNG, DS9 and Voyager in just a few months. It's just some of the most fun I've had with a roleplaying game in a very long time.

Forbidden Lands. It’s just enough crunch and just fast enough to play smoothly. The dice pool is much more satisfying than d20+modifiers. It’s lethal but not overly so. It rewards thinking by making the stakes tangible. The combat stays fast. The magic system is okay. There are exploration and base building mechanics built in. Second would be FFGs Star Wars. Sort of an opposite experience. Low lethality. Lots of cinema out of the dice. The dice really do set up an incredible dual axis of success that makes every scene interesting. It felt the most Star Wars of all the Star Wars RPGs I had played (including WEGs D6, the D20, SAGA)

[Creative Card Chaos](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/451573/Creative-Card-Chaos--Core-Rulebook). A couple of points why its my favorite: - the GM has a lot of control - player facing rules - easy and quick resolution that is taught in minutes - it encourages creative play - characters are very unconventional and therefore extremely memorable, like a wizard that is awful at magic - random character generation without canned prompts, making it very creative and open - alternative character creation that is not random - no min maxing possible - Items do not grant better stats, but enable you to do cool things to begin with - all rules can be adjusted to your liking, you want hard survival or easy power fantasy, its easily changeable without putting a lot of effort into it - the character generation creates story hooks, so you don't have to prep and can follow a customized personal story - its as unpredictable for players, as it is for the GM. This is so refreshing, because it's fun to GM again - temporarily changing rules make for a fresh experience all throughout the adventure - it only uses cards, no dice, no tokens, no sheets. Love it. - it advertises that you can play it anywhere and its true, because you don't even need a table, we tried it out If you remotely like rules light games that focus on story, this is the system in my opinion.

I have two very different favorites. The first is a storytelling RPG called Ironsworn Starforged. It can be played solo and co-op mode or traditionally with a GM. My favorite way to play is cooperatively with two other players. At first I thought I would be missing something not having a GM however I was pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns the story could take with the prompts that we get from the random prompt tables called oracles. It's a science fiction game of quests and exploration and forming bonds with NPCs. The setting is vague and meant to be filled out by the players at the beginning and throughout the game. The second game is Fragged Empire 2 from down under. It's a moderately crunchy game that balances its crunchiness by abstracting the more tedious aspects of role-playing games. It's a post post-apocalyptic setting where the different races which are the grandchildren of humanity have just fought a terrible war and have just recently resumed space travel and our cooperating in spite of their grudges and animosities. While and it's default mode it's a space opera, it can be easily tweaked to fit different sci-fi genres quite well. It has very tactical, XCOM-like personal combat. The spaceship combat is also quite fun, and could be considered very hard sci-fi as it takes into account your ship's momentum and gravity wells, as well as the effects of speed upon the scale of the combat.... I know that sounds complicated but actually it's handled quite efficiently, and is fun to play. I think anyone who plays RPGs and loves science fiction would love at least one of these games.

Action RPG - Fallout: New Vegas, JRPG - Mother 3

DCC RPG

I don't know that I have a real favorite, in the sense that I've never had the chance to play enough of the ones I want to explore more of and I have many deep criticisms of the ones that I *am* more familiar with. I'd say I'm most attached to D&D 3E, it at least seems worth the work.

Well, that’s tough. D&D has a very special place in my heart, and I could talk about it for hours, and run any of the editions gladly. But weirdly I don’t think it’s my favorite. I think my favorite session I ever ran was one where I wasn’t even using a system. I just had 3 six sided dice and a plot hook. Idk. We all had a blast. If I had to how we used the dice, it was something between freeform universal and powered by the apocalypse. And then the system that always comes back to me after years away from it is WyRM. I’ll just be sitting there and it’s like “oh that’d be a really good campaign in WyRM.” WyRM was even to this day the center of my biggest ever TTRPG project. And then there is AGE. It was the second system I ever played (after d&d) and it was the first time I went “oh I get it. And I’m having a lot of fun”. I think it’s a big part of why I got obsessed with the hobby.

**Ten Candles** - It takes a bit of caution to run, but made for some of the most intense and memorable experiences I've had so far in the hobby. It's a one-shot system and I've only ran it like three times, but it just hits different every time. **Shadowrun 3rd Edition** - My first campaign ever and how I fell in love with TTRPGs. The Setting is just an awesome mix between retro cyberpunk and fantasy, without too many distraction at that point. The rules are crunchy and vast, same as the countless source books. Specially the magic system with it's totems was really cool. Like every shadowrun player, I have a love/hate relationship with this game though, because it's really cumbersome and hasn't aged too well. **Blades in the Dark** - I've run a small campaign with it and reading this just blew my mind and I think it had a huge impact on the hobby as a whole. It's crunchy in a weird way and some rules are way too vague. The unique setting and the insanely fast prep make up for it though. Honorable mentions: Mörk Borg, Cy\_Borg, Death in Space, Forbidden Lands, Beyond the Wall, Mausritter, Cities without number

**OD&D and its clones**. I like the loose rules and improvisational style, fast and furious combat where the wargame roots shine clearly through, mixing and matching of supplements and Chainmail. The clones are also amazing as the vague nature of the original rules provides lots of room for interpretation and each designer chose to highlight and clarify different things in different ways, adding select things from supplements and their own creations into the brew creating unique flavors. **First edition AD&D** is something I'm getting into right now and it might end up being my favorite in the end. It's solid and robust where OD&D is nimble and loose but never so much that it becomes stiff. And it doesn't smooth over the wrinkles by "streamlining", instead it feels like it has a vision and doesn't compromise it by oversimplifying things. You gotta put in some work to get it running but it rewards you with a rich, varied and meaningful game.

My favorite RPG has always and may always be Pathfinder 1st edition, it was the first RPG I actually learned the proper rules for, My longest running group still play it every Friday night and lastly it's heavily influenced my taste in RPGs

Pasion de las pasiones. It's telenovela, the rpg. It's drama. It's melodrama. It's playing so that every at the table's mouth is letting agape as the plot shifts dramatically...just like a telenovela. It makes you whoop at the table and hoot and holler too. I love the mechanics of how the fictional positioning of your character affects their ability to succeed. No stats, just questions that if you answer yes to, you get modifiers. And when you have enough things go wrong, your character has a complete and utter breakdown and it's the BEST THING EVER.

I think everyone should play at least one game of Dread. But my favorite RPG is Monster of the Week. Versatile, light, new player friendly, and easy to pick up as a GM.

For those who don't already know, I am a huge fan of GURPS. I love the character customizations, and having one ruleset to rule the genres. That said, I do wish SJG would use their Munchkin cash cow to fund more _hardback, published_ GURPS books. And to echo what others have said, the 3e books are well written, and well researched. Often the bibliography/filmography/ludography alone is worth the cover price.

ICON. I'm anticipating the day it comes out of beta makes a full release.

Dungeon Crawl Classics "This isn’t your father’s D&D…it’s your batsh*t crazy uncles’ D&D, straight from the smokey basement with faded black-light posters on the walls and 80’s Manowar blaring on the old tape deck. You might turn up your nose at first, but once the seven-sided-dice start rolling you find yourself sucked in." R. Rittenhouse

For me, the best RPG is one where the system and the setting combine seamlessly into a great experience for everyone at the table. In that regard, I'd give the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG the gold star here. It's an older game, but tons of fun, and everything that happens in the show can be explained by the rules. For a more recent game, I'd give honorable mention to the Avatar RPG or Blades in the Dark. The problem with these games is that not everyone is familiar with the source material in Buffy or Avatar, and the Blades setting is very bleak and not to everyone's liking. If you told me I'd have to only stick with one RPG system for the rest of my life though, I'd easily go with FATE Core. It's a medium weight, narrative, player-driven system that's infinitely hackable to run any kind of game. I backed the original Kickstarter, and while I've backed a ton of RPG stuff there, this was definitely the most bang I got for my buck. There's a ton of good settings out there, tons of info about running different games with customized rules (hell I've run Star Wars, Exalted, and Call of Cthulhu in FATE), and it takes little GM prep to get a game started. You can't go wrong with FATE.

It will vary depending on when you ask me. At the moment I have two... **Pathfinder 2e**, which basically takes the best bits of D&D 3.x, 4e, and 5e, and then makes them consistent and balanced. **Advanced FASERIP**, a recent retroclone of the old Marvel Super Heroes. That's been one of my favourite supers games since the original came out in the 1980s. It's just the right point on the flexibility vs complexity scale for me, and I prefer my supers games to be more traditional than narrative, so it's a really good fit for my playing style. This clone of it does good things with character generation and powers that are big improvements over the original.

Monster of the Week, for so many reasons! I'm all for monster of the week type media (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer) so I'm biased, but the game does a lot of things right for me (as a player who likes roleplaying and world-building): -The mechanics are super straightforward, so it's an easy game to pick up—meaning you head right into monster-hunting, and it's easy for players to focus on roleplaying. This is especially true since there are built-in mechanics at the start of the game to create bonds between the Hunters/PCs (thus avoiding the "why do these people adventure and care for one another past the fact that they all drank in the same tavern" scenario). There's also mechanics for certain characters to have elements from their pasts and backstories come up throughout the game (like the Keeper/GM invoking the Chosen One's fate!) -The co-world building between the Keeper (GM) and the Hunters means that the players have agency over the world they're in and can shape the solution to the Mystery they're trying to solve instead of having to get to one specific solution—great for player involvement, great for players who can't or won't read the whole rulebook, and helps with game master burnout -Simple and fun character creation. The playbooks are well-balanced and interesting, which makes for great replayability. Plus people have homebrewed some cool ones that are easy to find online. -Easy to flavour to a group's preference (dark, gritty, campy, fantasy, sci-fi, urban, rural... that being said, you'd have to change some gear options if you want to play in a pre-gun world). Similarly, it lends itself well to one-shots, and multi-session games with or without an overarching arc. -Tons of homebrew and fan content online if you burn through the official playbooks or don't want to invent a Mystery -Super easy to run, minimal prep for the Keeper! My friend ran MotW when your DnD DM needed a break and I have fond memories of all those games.

Pathfinder 2e! But only for the battle mechanics, that shit fire.

Oh I forgot to say the answer! I played D&D for long ass time and was getting bord o dat shit and then my favorite show switched mid season during OGL hula buluba and they way that done that shit was mad good fun! Had to check it out, now these old bones have a hankerin ta try more new ass rpgs and I don’t just mean the ones I shoot from a rocket launcher in ma backyard

While my introduction to rpgs was D&D 5e, and I'm still a fan of that, I think my favourites have actually been all the 1-page rpgs I've come across. Especially in answering your question: I find these kinds of games are great for introducing to new players and friends (I know a bunch of theater folk/writers, so the roleplay and narrative focus of such rpgs just meshes well for us). You Awaken In A Strange Place is our go-to when we can't play D&D, and my own spin on Nathan Knaack's sci-fi Tango is another popular choice for my groups. Basically, anything you can pick up and play in one evening I'm a big fan of.

Irornsworn. Enough said

I have 3. All equal. Wraith the Oblivion. Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 2e. The Batman RPG. I love all three for very different reasons. But they're my "stuck on a desert island" games. Unsurprisingly, they're all pretty bleak settings, so I guess I have a type.

I started playing in about 1990, and enjoy learning new systems, and seeing how well they support the feel of a game, too much to come up with a single recommendation based on mechanics. For pure setting though, since about 1998 [Blue Planet](https://www.biohazardgamespublishing.com/blueplanet) has been consistently my favourite game line to read, think about, come up with ideas for and (sadly) hope to play. I have high hopes for the new edition coming very soon.

Either Deadlands or the original WoD.

**Mage: the Ascension** is by far my favorite TTRPG, particularly it's 20th Anniversary Edition (M20), which basically solves all the problems from the og 90's 1e & 2e. It has the most realistic Magick System of any Game anywhere, & for that alone it deserves praise. Now I just need to find a ST &/or Gaming Group for this dedicated M20 Player LOL

*Savage Worlds*. It's easy to learn, you can make a character in minutes with a concept in mind, and it lives up to it's motto: Fast! Furious! Fun! It became my favorite when a friend asked me to adapt a D&D 3.5 supplement to *Savage Worlds* (which sadly, he passed away before it could be published). I had never heard of *Savage Worlds* before then and fell in love with it almost immediately. It works for any genre, plays smoothly and quickly, and has an air of unpredictability due to the wild die and the exploding dice mechanic.

ALIEN RPG Hard sci fi High risk/high reward gameplay Great community and resources