So over the past 20+ years I have run many different systems, in fact in terms of DnD I have only run or played 5th edition, and only for the past 4 years. So just wondering what are peoples other fav systems to run, either because of the rules, setting or some other reason. My top ones below.
Paranoia:- Paranoia is by far my fav system to run, even more so than DnD. I have even once found a way to segway a long DnD campaign into a paranoia game. TPK'd the party in the first 40 mins of the session, only to have each one wake up discovering they had been in stasis, living a simulation of a game that Friend Computer had found the rules and a single campaign for. To become the next Red Citizens to find trouble and shoot it. When we went back to DnD (4 sessions later in the end) I had the characters come round having been gassed by hallucinogenic spores. A system where you just get to mess with the players, where I can be getting a message out of game, from a player telling me another player is using a blue marker on the whiteboard in a meeting, and where you get to give them a nuclear hand grenade, range as far as you can throw it, blast radius, 4.5 miles :).
L5R 1st edition:- I have read the rules of the other editions of L5R, but my fav is still the first game. I still have every book and adventure ever published. The setting is amazing, the Kolat are possibly one of the greatest factions in, not just Roleplay games, but general fiction, the Kolat book, merchants guide to Rokugan, was one of the cleverest bits of publishing ever. An opening few pages going into market systems and structures and the price of rice, before then telling the DM, that hopefully any player thought this book is dull. The way the world evolved in real time over several years, driven by the CCG, made for some fantastic stories that a campaign could be set around. The only issue with it was, if you played to RAW, and stuck strictly to the theme, your players could well kill the BBEG and then have to commit ritual suicide to maintain family honour.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st/2nd (re published Hogshead) edition. :- the very first RPG system I played and DM'd, the enemy within campaign was amazing. The rules where easy while also being deep enough to make for a really interesting game, the book itself, nearly 500 pages, for I think £30 you got the Players handbook, DM guide and Monster Manual plus elements of Xanathars and tashas all rolled up in one book. As a DM you could just get so dark, the players where struggling to just survive, not be the great heroes of the age. Also one of the best magic systems in roleplay, each magic user had a unique list of spells, and the elementalist is a class I would love to see in DnD, either as a subclass of Druid or sorceror, or its own distinct class
Dread. An incredible system for horror one-shots, which has helped me genuinely scare my players. The Jenga tower mechanic builds tension like nothing else.
Runner-up is FFG’s Star Wars roleplaying game. The narrative dice system is amazing, and Star Wars is a fun setting for adventures.
I forgot as well Deadlands, using poker chips and playing cards as well as dice. But also the setting is brilliant, as a DM you can really create an interesting world to put your players in.
I once enjoyed running Champions games. It was the best in Super Hero roleplaying games, though it suffered from the most technical and difficult to use system of any game I have played. If all the players had a solid grasp of the rules a fight could go fast enough, but the rulebook was huge and I couldn't get my players to read it.
My other favorite was Shadowrun. A sort of quirky mashup of D&D fantasy and cyberpunk. Set in a future where magic had abruptly come back to the world, many things had resumed their "high mana" forms. Decades later the world was still recovering. Evil corporations ruled, Dragons could be found in the sky, and you could play a fully cybered up Troll. The rules were complex, there was an entirely different set of them for magic in the Astral realm, computer hacking in the Matrix, and for fighting in the game world.
White Wolf published their "World Of Darkness", though it has changed nearly to the point of my beings unable to recognize it. I didn't care for most of the primary game types: Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, and Wraith, but I ran games in all but Wraith and did read through that. My favorite was Mage.
Never used the narrative dice system, it is one of the things that makes me unsure about trying the latest edition of L5R. How does it work in game?
It makes for a very fast-paced, cinematic game, and since dice results tend to be smoother with pools, it really makes each character’s strengths stand out. Combat can be a bit clunky, but that’s my only criticism. The whole system is much more skill-focused anyway, you can have great sessions without any combat and still roll lots of dice.
I loved Shadowrun, but I had a lot of trouble with the combat system. The joker in the deck was the rules for initiative. In the physical world the Street Samurai types could take as many as three combat turns before anyone else got in a shot. To keep up, a Magician needed to be in the Astral, and a Decker needed to be in the Matrix. Since the rules for all three realms, physical, magical, and computer, were entirely different, this often meant spending a lot of time with each player, resolving an entire encounter, before moving to the next character.
I used to buy games and read them just out of curiosity and the hope that someday I might use them. I remember Nephilim, Living Steel, The Morrow Project, and Twilight 2000. I tried GMing a couple different space travel games, like Traveller and Shatterzone. I played a couple different incarnations of Star Wars games. Jedi as player characters were always overpowered.
Champions. Hands down the best RPG ever made, IMO -- at least the early editions as written by Peterson and MacDonald. The later additions, after Steve Long's group took over, are not to my taste, but I've never run anything past 4e Champions, only read 5e and refused to go any further with it.
Champions is by far the easiest for me to GM, but it is the hardest to run, in a way, because of the time it takes to make up all the villains (I usually don't use the pre-made ones from the Enemies books), My 2 year campaign had, I think, over 900 custom-made villains. That is a LOT of work. Once you have the villain and the plot and the combat maps, though, actually running it live with the players was the easiest for me. The original 2nd edition rule book was only like 90 pages long, and I just "got" the internal consistency of the system to the degree that I rarely had to even look anything up. I had internalized it so well that when 4e came along, which was mostly like 2e with just some tweaks to clean up balance and make for consistency, I had very little trouble adapting.
I haven't played Champions in close to 30 years, but I could probably run it tomorrow, if I had the villains or wanted to use some of the better ones from Enemies like Eurostar. I can do that with no other system. Hell, I'd have an easier time running Champions tonight than running my session of 5e D&D, in terms of how the rules work, because I still don't have a grasp of all the rules of 5e D&D. The sum total of the 4e Champions rules is 265 pages-- Imagine if all the rules, 100% of them, for D&D were contained in a book the size of just the PHB, rather than spread across half a dozen books (DMG, MM, XGE, etc.), and you have about the size of the Champions rules. And the Champions rules are more consistent and contain fewer exceptions, provisos, and quid-pro-quos than the D&D books (especially spells, each of which obeys its own rules that you must read individually). At least for me, Champions is a super smooth game to understand and GM. It just takes more work than D&D to prep a scenario, because with D&D the tradition is to use pre-packaged monsters and they have thousands of statblocks, whereas in Champions, you have to make up every single villain individually, power by power.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The original MSH from back in the 80's, extremely fun and simple.
I never GM'ed for RIFTS, but I played in a game a couple times.
GURPS was fun, but it's magic system was strange if a bit lackluster, and it tried too hard to cover everything at once ( Sci-Fi, medievil, high fantasy. ), it's skill system was interesting though.
These are my top 5 systems outside of D&D, more or less in order of preference:
World of Darkness - This was the first roleplay system I ever played, way back when I was a kid. It's still one of my favourites to this day for the heavy emphasis on narrative play, social encounters, manipulation and secrecy. I love how adaptable the system is with all of the lore and sub-settings and the dark theme. It makes for a great game where the players get to play as the things that everyone is afraid of, whilst having to try and control themselves and still having to be careful not to cross the wrong people. I find the only thing that sometimes makes World of Darkness difficult to run is that you need to have a group that can keep serious about the plot and how they interact with others... the moment players start being silly is when it no longer has the right feel.
Call of Cthulhu - Like World of Darkness, I enjoy the dark theme of Cthulhu and the constant struggle with trying to deal with things as horrible events gradually unfold before your very eyes. It's another system where you need players to take the game somewhat seriously. I think another reason why I hold Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness in such high regard is because they are set in the real world so there's a often a greater connection to what is going on. Always loved that Cthulhu often has a bit of a double-edged sword with the mechanics, where you want to do well to uncover the mystery but at the same time want to be careful not to uncover too much because it'll drive you insane or get you killed.
Ten Candles - Another dark and serious horror themed game, it's one of my favourite systems for a quick one-shot adventure... mostly because that's all it can ever be due to the fact that the characters will inevitably die at the end. It's a really fun game for a Halloween special or some other event where the players are trying to make it through an apocalypse world to achieve certain things before they come to meet their doom.
Paranoia - It's whacky, it's wild and it's a total barrel of laughs... but it's also a very clever game where players get to carefully plot and manipulate situations to increase their character's chances & reputation. A crazy moment in Paranoia that is up there with my favourites was when a player had a device that caused other players to sneeze a thick green ooze, one of the other characters ended up sneezing all over their weapon, which another in the group reported as a violation as they didn't have green clearance, which then caused the gun to self-detonate... the player with the gun had a mutation which caused them to have blue blood, the blood sprayed all over another character so they also got reported for a violation for wearing blue whilst being a red ranking troubleshooter so they were also terminated.
Mothership - Yet another dark themed game (I think it's hard to beat a dark mystery when you have the right group for it) that needs a semi-serious group to be played effectively. One of my favourite things about Mothership is that it is easy to create a terrifying scenario with the smallest of things going wrong on a spaceship... just a simple flashing red light on a terminal can send the players into a complete panic.
To keep up, a Magician needed to be in the Astral, and a Decker needed to be in the Matrix. Since the rules for all three realms, physical, magical, and computer, were entirely different, this often meant spending a lot of time with each player, resolving an entire encounter, before moving to the next character
I only did the Astral or Matrix if the whole party could do it. Otherwise I just did a short narration and a couple of dice rolls to resolve the whole thing. Most of my groups just used Astral for recon anyway.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Ars Magica is probably the game I've kept returning to since I first played it in the 90's. Best magic system that has ever been made in any RPG (my opinion). If you haven't read it, do it. I think 3rd edition is available for free (it used to be).
These are games that have meant a lot to me up through the years.
MERP. First game played. Incredible cloky, but hours of teenage fun! Have the best critical tables ever created. But beyond that. Stay away that system.
Vampire the Masquerade (and WoD in general). Kind of changed how we played games in the 90's. The original game was brilliant.
Deadlands. Fantastic initiative system (I'm not talking about the d20 version, but the original). The magic system is also awesome and very wild west! If you've never played anything but D&D, I think Deadlands is a good place to start.
Warhammer. Mostly fantasy, but also some 40K. Fantastic setting. "Shadows over Bögenhafen" in the "Enemy within" campaign is one of the best adventures written (and one of the very few written adventures I have GM'ed).
Blades in the Dark. Very cool setting and nice game. The crew and heist concept works really well. A very good place to start if you want to check out some of the newer "indie" games.
Call of Cthulhu. Only game I have GM'ed where the players simply quit mid-session and refused to play on.
Call of Cthulhu - Like World of Darkness, I enjoy the dark theme of Cthulhu and the constant struggle with trying to deal with things as horrible events gradually unfold before your very eyes. It's another system where you need players to take the game somewhat seriously. I think another reason why I hold Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness in such high regard is because they are set in the real world so there's a often a greater connection to what is going on. Always loved that Cthulhu often has a bit of a double-edged sword with the mechanics, where you want to do well to uncover the mystery but at the same time want to be careful not to uncover too much because it'll drive you insane or get you killed.
I would love to try Call of Cthulhu. I have the boxed starter set and went through the tutorial solo adventure, but I don't know anyone else interested in it. For just the reasons you mention here (plus I am just a huge Lovecraft fan).
In my solo run-through, both times, trying different tactics, my character died a horrible death. I think many players would be frustrated by this. Instead, my reaction was -- this is awesome.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I would love to try Call of Cthulhu. I have the boxed starter set and went through the tutorial solo adventure, but I don't know anyone else interested in it. For just the reasons you mention here (plus I am just a huge Lovecraft fan).
In my solo run-through, both times, trying different tactics, my character died a horrible death. I think many players would be frustrated by this. Instead, my reaction was -- this is awesome.
Dying an horrible death (or going insane) is part of the expectations you should have when you play CoC :-) It is (in my opinion) not a game very suited for campaigns, but it is fantastic for one-shots. I really hope you find some one to try it with, and as I said - it is a game that is perfect to spend one Saturday evening playing!
Dying an horrible death (or going insane) is part of the expectations you should have when you play CoC :-) It is (in my opinion) not a game very suited for campaigns, but it is fantastic for one-shots. I really hope you find some one to try it with, and as I said - it is a game that is perfect to spend one Saturday evening playing!
I think if one has read a lot of Lovecraft (I am currently 2 short stories and a novella away from having read all of his fictional works), one would naturally expect the have one's character die or lose his/her mind.
There are a number of published campaigns, so clearly it is possible to run a campaign with it -- but my understanding is for most of these campaigns, one is recommended to have at least 2 backup characters. One person who has GMed all 6 of the published campaigns, some of them more than once, said that few campaigns ended with everyone playing the same character they started with, but all but one of them ended with at least one starting PC managing to survive to the very end. In fact he argued this made those campaigns "not Lovecraftian enough" because "too many characters survived." LOL...
Again most players would probably not like that but as a Lovecraft fan, I say, bring it on...
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Again most players would probably not like that but as a Lovecraft fan, I say, bring it on...
I think that is more up to the way you "sell" it to the players and is part of the reason I think it is a system more suited for one shots. Simply "sell" the game as:
"We are going to have a lot of fun this Saturday, but most of you (players) will probably don't survive. You will die or go mad. That is part of the game."
But yes, I totally agree that players who are more into the "gamey" part of DnD will probably not like CoC since it's certainly not a game about "winning" against the monsters.
These are my top 5 systems outside of D&D, more or less in order of preference:
World of Darkness - This was the first roleplay system I ever played, way back when I was a kid. It's still one of my favourites to this day for the heavy emphasis on narrative play, social encounters, manipulation and secrecy. I love how adaptable the system is with all of the lore and sub-settings and the dark theme. It makes for a great game where the players get to play as the things that everyone is afraid of, whilst having to try and control themselves and still having to be careful not to cross the wrong people. I find the only thing that sometimes makes World of Darkness difficult to run is that you need to have a group that can keep serious about the plot and how they interact with others... the moment players start being silly is when it no longer has the right feel.
Call of Cthulhu - Like World of Darkness, I enjoy the dark theme of Cthulhu and the constant struggle with trying to deal with things as horrible events gradually unfold before your very eyes. It's another system where you need players to take the game somewhat seriously. I think another reason why I hold Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness in such high regard is because they are set in the real world so there's a often a greater connection to what is going on. Always loved that Cthulhu often has a bit of a double-edged sword with the mechanics, where you want to do well to uncover the mystery but at the same time want to be careful not to uncover too much because it'll drive you insane or get you killed.
Ten Candles - Another dark and serious horror themed game, it's one of my favourite systems for a quick one-shot adventure... mostly because that's all it can ever be due to the fact that the characters will inevitably die at the end. It's a really fun game for a Halloween special or some other event where the players are trying to make it through an apocalypse world to achieve certain things before they come to meet their doom.
Paranoia - It's whacky, it's wild and it's a total barrel of laughs... but it's also a very clever game where players get to carefully plot and manipulate situations to increase their character's chances & reputation. A crazy moment in Paranoia that is up there with my favourites was when a player had a device that caused other players to sneeze a thick green ooze, one of the other characters ended up sneezing all over their weapon, which another in the group reported as a violation as they didn't have green clearance, which then caused the gun to self-detonate... the player with the gun had a mutation which caused them to have blue blood, the blood sprayed all over another character so they also got reported for a violation for wearing blue whilst being a red ranking troubleshooter so they were also terminated.
Mothership - Yet another dark themed game (I think it's hard to beat a dark mystery when you have the right group for it) that needs a semi-serious group to be played effectively. One of my favourite things about Mothership is that it is easy to create a terrifying scenario with the smallest of things going wrong on a spaceship... just a simple flashing red light on a terminal can send the players into a complete panic.
Paranoia made me a much better DM. Interacting with players as friend computer, just misconstruing every little thing they say or do in a funny way it makes you think on your feet so so much more then I think any other roleplay system, you have a rough idea of a mission, set piece situations listed down, a long list of experimental equipment a load of forms (gotta have that paperwork) and then just let chaos commence and accept your along for the ride and just react to the players. I advise all DMs to just try running a one shot and you will learn so much.
Ars Magica is probably the game I've kept returning to since I first played it in the 90's. Best magic system that has ever been made in any RPG (my opinion). If you haven't read it, do it. I think 3rd edition is available for free (it used to be).
Loved it to, but not easy to get players (even active, mature ones) involved to the level of playing not only their character but the whole covenant. It's actually quite demanding in terms of management of resources for example.
Completely agree with that. I love the magic system, and setting, but the downtime system including running the covenant, study etc takes far too much time, and you have to have extremely invested players (or prepare to do a lot of work as GM). In my last campaign I sent the players on a journey so we didn't have to care about running the covenant, and I simply used XP instead of the study system. Works well for shorter campaigns. And if anyone want to test it: be sure to force all players to play young newly educated magi. Do not allow them to create older characters, they will be way to powerful and have no chance to know what they can do with their magic.
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So over the past 20+ years I have run many different systems, in fact in terms of DnD I have only run or played 5th edition, and only for the past 4 years. So just wondering what are peoples other fav systems to run, either because of the rules, setting or some other reason. My top ones below.
Paranoia:- Paranoia is by far my fav system to run, even more so than DnD. I have even once found a way to segway a long DnD campaign into a paranoia game. TPK'd the party in the first 40 mins of the session, only to have each one wake up discovering they had been in stasis, living a simulation of a game that Friend Computer had found the rules and a single campaign for. To become the next Red Citizens to find trouble and shoot it. When we went back to DnD (4 sessions later in the end) I had the characters come round having been gassed by hallucinogenic spores. A system where you just get to mess with the players, where I can be getting a message out of game, from a player telling me another player is using a blue marker on the whiteboard in a meeting, and where you get to give them a nuclear hand grenade, range as far as you can throw it, blast radius, 4.5 miles :).
L5R 1st edition:- I have read the rules of the other editions of L5R, but my fav is still the first game. I still have every book and adventure ever published. The setting is amazing, the Kolat are possibly one of the greatest factions in, not just Roleplay games, but general fiction, the Kolat book, merchants guide to Rokugan, was one of the cleverest bits of publishing ever. An opening few pages going into market systems and structures and the price of rice, before then telling the DM, that hopefully any player thought this book is dull. The way the world evolved in real time over several years, driven by the CCG, made for some fantastic stories that a campaign could be set around. The only issue with it was, if you played to RAW, and stuck strictly to the theme, your players could well kill the BBEG and then have to commit ritual suicide to maintain family honour.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st/2nd (re published Hogshead) edition. :- the very first RPG system I played and DM'd, the enemy within campaign was amazing. The rules where easy while also being deep enough to make for a really interesting game, the book itself, nearly 500 pages, for I think £30 you got the Players handbook, DM guide and Monster Manual plus elements of Xanathars and tashas all rolled up in one book. As a DM you could just get so dark, the players where struggling to just survive, not be the great heroes of the age. Also one of the best magic systems in roleplay, each magic user had a unique list of spells, and the elementalist is a class I would love to see in DnD, either as a subclass of Druid or sorceror, or its own distinct class
So what is your fav system to run as a DM?
Dread. An incredible system for horror one-shots, which has helped me genuinely scare my players. The Jenga tower mechanic builds tension like nothing else.
Runner-up is FFG’s Star Wars roleplaying game. The narrative dice system is amazing, and Star Wars is a fun setting for adventures.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I forgot as well Deadlands, using poker chips and playing cards as well as dice. But also the setting is brilliant, as a DM you can really create an interesting world to put your players in.
Never used the narrative dice system, it is one of the things that makes me unsure about trying the latest edition of L5R. How does it work in game?
I once enjoyed running Champions games. It was the best in Super Hero roleplaying games, though it suffered from the most technical and difficult to use system of any game I have played. If all the players had a solid grasp of the rules a fight could go fast enough, but the rulebook was huge and I couldn't get my players to read it.
My other favorite was Shadowrun. A sort of quirky mashup of D&D fantasy and cyberpunk. Set in a future where magic had abruptly come back to the world, many things had resumed their "high mana" forms. Decades later the world was still recovering. Evil corporations ruled, Dragons could be found in the sky, and you could play a fully cybered up Troll. The rules were complex, there was an entirely different set of them for magic in the Astral realm, computer hacking in the Matrix, and for fighting in the game world.
White Wolf published their "World Of Darkness", though it has changed nearly to the point of my beings unable to recognize it. I didn't care for most of the primary game types: Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, and Wraith, but I ran games in all but Wraith and did read through that. My favorite was Mage.
<Insert clever signature here>
Fantasy HERO - the fantasy, swords and sorcery version of Champions.
Gamma World - mutants and monsters hundreds of years after the apocalypse.
Mechanoids/RIFTS/Robotech - Paladium's Sci-Fi RPGs. Ironically I never did play Paladium Fantasy.
OMG Shadowrun was so much fun. Once you learn the basics it is easy peasy.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
It makes for a very fast-paced, cinematic game, and since dice results tend to be smoother with pools, it really makes each character’s strengths stand out. Combat can be a bit clunky, but that’s my only criticism. The whole system is much more skill-focused anyway, you can have great sessions without any combat and still roll lots of dice.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I loved Shadowrun, but I had a lot of trouble with the combat system. The joker in the deck was the rules for initiative. In the physical world the Street Samurai types could take as many as three combat turns before anyone else got in a shot. To keep up, a Magician needed to be in the Astral, and a Decker needed to be in the Matrix. Since the rules for all three realms, physical, magical, and computer, were entirely different, this often meant spending a lot of time with each player, resolving an entire encounter, before moving to the next character.
I used to buy games and read them just out of curiosity and the hope that someday I might use them. I remember Nephilim, Living Steel, The Morrow Project, and Twilight 2000. I tried GMing a couple different space travel games, like Traveller and Shatterzone. I played a couple different incarnations of Star Wars games. Jedi as player characters were always overpowered.
<Insert clever signature here>
As far as D&D goes, have only ever GMed AD&D 2e, and D&D 3e, prior to 5e.
Otherwise it was Shadowrun 2e/3e. Shadowrun is my favorite next to D&D. (I also love WoD, but never GMed it.)
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Champions. Hands down the best RPG ever made, IMO -- at least the early editions as written by Peterson and MacDonald. The later additions, after Steve Long's group took over, are not to my taste, but I've never run anything past 4e Champions, only read 5e and refused to go any further with it.
Champions is by far the easiest for me to GM, but it is the hardest to run, in a way, because of the time it takes to make up all the villains (I usually don't use the pre-made ones from the Enemies books), My 2 year campaign had, I think, over 900 custom-made villains. That is a LOT of work. Once you have the villain and the plot and the combat maps, though, actually running it live with the players was the easiest for me. The original 2nd edition rule book was only like 90 pages long, and I just "got" the internal consistency of the system to the degree that I rarely had to even look anything up. I had internalized it so well that when 4e came along, which was mostly like 2e with just some tweaks to clean up balance and make for consistency, I had very little trouble adapting.
I haven't played Champions in close to 30 years, but I could probably run it tomorrow, if I had the villains or wanted to use some of the better ones from Enemies like Eurostar. I can do that with no other system. Hell, I'd have an easier time running Champions tonight than running my session of 5e D&D, in terms of how the rules work, because I still don't have a grasp of all the rules of 5e D&D. The sum total of the 4e Champions rules is 265 pages-- Imagine if all the rules, 100% of them, for D&D were contained in a book the size of just the PHB, rather than spread across half a dozen books (DMG, MM, XGE, etc.), and you have about the size of the Champions rules. And the Champions rules are more consistent and contain fewer exceptions, provisos, and quid-pro-quos than the D&D books (especially spells, each of which obeys its own rules that you must read individually). At least for me, Champions is a super smooth game to understand and GM. It just takes more work than D&D to prep a scenario, because with D&D the tradition is to use pre-packaged monsters and they have thousands of statblocks, whereas in Champions, you have to make up every single villain individually, power by power.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The original MSH from back in the 80's, extremely fun and simple.
I never GM'ed for RIFTS, but I played in a game a couple times.
GURPS was fun, but it's magic system was strange if a bit lackluster, and it tried too hard to cover everything at once ( Sci-Fi, medievil, high fantasy. ), it's skill system was interesting though.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
These are my top 5 systems outside of D&D, more or less in order of preference:
I only did the Astral or Matrix if the whole party could do it. Otherwise I just did a short narration and a couple of dice rolls to resolve the whole thing. Most of my groups just used Astral for recon anyway.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Ars Magica is probably the game I've kept returning to since I first played it in the 90's. Best magic system that has ever been made in any RPG (my opinion). If you haven't read it, do it. I think 3rd edition is available for free (it used to be).
These are games that have meant a lot to me up through the years.
MERP. First game played. Incredible cloky, but hours of teenage fun! Have the best critical tables ever created. But beyond that. Stay away that system.
Vampire the Masquerade (and WoD in general). Kind of changed how we played games in the 90's. The original game was brilliant.
Deadlands. Fantastic initiative system (I'm not talking about the d20 version, but the original). The magic system is also awesome and very wild west! If you've never played anything but D&D, I think Deadlands is a good place to start.
Warhammer. Mostly fantasy, but also some 40K. Fantastic setting. "Shadows over Bögenhafen" in the "Enemy within" campaign is one of the best adventures written (and one of the very few written adventures I have GM'ed).
Blades in the Dark. Very cool setting and nice game. The crew and heist concept works really well. A very good place to start if you want to check out some of the newer "indie" games.
Call of Cthulhu. Only game I have GM'ed where the players simply quit mid-session and refused to play on.
And a lot of homebrewn systems and settings.
Ludo ergo sum!
I would love to try Call of Cthulhu. I have the boxed starter set and went through the tutorial solo adventure, but I don't know anyone else interested in it. For just the reasons you mention here (plus I am just a huge Lovecraft fan).
In my solo run-through, both times, trying different tactics, my character died a horrible death. I think many players would be frustrated by this. Instead, my reaction was -- this is awesome.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Dying an horrible death (or going insane) is part of the expectations you should have when you play CoC :-) It is (in my opinion) not a game very suited for campaigns, but it is fantastic for one-shots. I really hope you find some one to try it with, and as I said - it is a game that is perfect to spend one Saturday evening playing!
Ludo ergo sum!
I think if one has read a lot of Lovecraft (I am currently 2 short stories and a novella away from having read all of his fictional works), one would naturally expect the have one's character die or lose his/her mind.
There are a number of published campaigns, so clearly it is possible to run a campaign with it -- but my understanding is for most of these campaigns, one is recommended to have at least 2 backup characters. One person who has GMed all 6 of the published campaigns, some of them more than once, said that few campaigns ended with everyone playing the same character they started with, but all but one of them ended with at least one starting PC managing to survive to the very end. In fact he argued this made those campaigns "not Lovecraftian enough" because "too many characters survived." LOL...
Again most players would probably not like that but as a Lovecraft fan, I say, bring it on...
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think that is more up to the way you "sell" it to the players and is part of the reason I think it is a system more suited for one shots. Simply "sell" the game as:
"We are going to have a lot of fun this Saturday, but most of you (players) will probably don't survive. You will die or go mad. That is part of the game."
But yes, I totally agree that players who are more into the "gamey" part of DnD will probably not like CoC since it's certainly not a game about "winning" against the monsters.
Ludo ergo sum!
These are my top 5 systems outside of D&D, more or less in order of preference:
Paranoia made me a much better DM. Interacting with players as friend computer, just misconstruing every little thing they say or do in a funny way it makes you think on your feet so so much more then I think any other roleplay system, you have a rough idea of a mission, set piece situations listed down, a long list of experimental equipment a load of forms (gotta have that paperwork) and then just let chaos commence and accept your along for the ride and just react to the players. I advise all DMs to just try running a one shot and you will learn so much.
Completely agree with that. I love the magic system, and setting, but the downtime system including running the covenant, study etc takes far too much time, and you have to have extremely invested players (or prepare to do a lot of work as GM). In my last campaign I sent the players on a journey so we didn't have to care about running the covenant, and I simply used XP instead of the study system. Works well for shorter campaigns. And if anyone want to test it: be sure to force all players to play young newly educated magi. Do not allow them to create older characters, they will be way to powerful and have no chance to know what they can do with their magic.
Ludo ergo sum!