OK, now that Fourth Edition has come about, I'm doing some shopping to see if there's a better system out there. I like sound rules, weapons' damage to be a single die (no bell-curves, please) and am looking for a fantasy milieu. What say you..?
OK, now that Fourth Edition has come about, I'm doing some shopping to see if there's a better system out there. I like sound rules, weapons' damage to be a single die (no bell-curves, please) and am looking for a fantasy milieu. What say you..?
There are several good systems available. The Hero System is solid, with a devoted fan base , dating back many years. The fantasy options are found in 'Fantasy Hero' and I think there several setting books.
'Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay' may appeal if you are familiar with Games Workshop tabletop games.
'True 20' may be the most similiar in feel to the D&D you are used to playing, and deserves a look.
Are you looking for a point based system or a level based system?
While I haven't actually tried it (yet), I've heard extremely good things about Savage Worlds.
You're middle requirement (no bell-curve damage) throws a kink in a lot of assessments. I'd concur with the above suggestion to try Savage Worlds (particularly their Evernight, Solomon Kane, or 50 Fathoms settings for a fantasy feel). However, by the latest Savage Worlds rules you'll get bell-curve damage as they use Strength Die + Weapon Die for melee. You could, of course, use their older damage system (Strength Die + weapon bonus) if that's really a sticking point. It's a very nice, fast rule system that introduced many of the concepts touted for 4e now, but did so about 5 years prior. It's also got a very active fan base providing all sorts of support.
If you want to really step out of the box, go check out Suzerain from Talisman Studios. It uses cards rather than dice, but you can easily substitute a d10 and be good to go there. Damage is based on the level of success from an attack check, so no bell-curve issues there. I did a review of Suzerain in this very forum. Talisman has a fantasy-focused setting coming out this summer/fall called Relic, but their existing offering (Untamed Empires) are very fantasy-focused as well.
Both of these systems use an "exploding dice" model if that is a consideration.
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OK, now that Fourth Edition has come about, I'm doing some shopping to see if there's a better system out there. I like sound rules, weapons' damage to be a single die (no bell-curves, please) and am looking for a fantasy milieu. What say you..?
My favourite is the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game (WHRP).
The setting feels pretty grim, PCs are more mortal than in D&D, and adversaries are really evil and memorable (especially in comparision to standard D&D).There is more emphasis on role playing, fights are more lethal (and preferably avoided for that reason, especiall during "low levels"), there are careers instead of classes which make for a simpler game system. Supplements focus on fluff, and don't add too many new rules. Even magic supplement don't increase the number of available spells overmuch.
The setting is losely based on medieval Europe, the main "country" very roughly corresponding to the holy roman empire.
One of the best campaigns ever in many roleplayers eyes is based in WHRP ("The enemy within"). Another big pro is that after 22 years of WHRP just two editions were published. ;-) And finally the design team who created the second edition is Green Ronin Publishing (which should be reason enough for some people).
A definite recommendation for people prefering role playing over roll playing. If I hadn't started to play D&D a long time ago, this would be my only rpg system in use.
More information can be found e.g. here.
Cheers,
Günther
P.S.
The game is based on the table top game, but can be played perfectly well without ever touching it.
My favourite is the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game (WHRP)... There is more emphasis on role playing, fights are more lethal (and preferably avoided for that reason, especiall during "low levels"), there are careers instead of classes which make for a simpler game system. Supplements focus on fluff, and don't add too many new rules. Even magic supplement don't increase the number of available spells overmuch.
Sounds like WotC's guide on what NOT to do with 4/e :)
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Sounds like WotC's guide on what NOT to do with 4/e :)
... in order to make it a better game? :p
Seriously: Not really. Both games feel and are very different.
Heroic vs. grim and gritty,
Rules heavy with a lot of rule extensions vs rules light,
Action & role playing vs role playing & action,
High vs "medium" fantasy,
Many settings vs one.
I like both games because of their differences.
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OK, now that Fourth Edition has come about, I'm doing some shopping to see if there's a better system out there. I like sound rules, weapons' damage to be a single die (no bell-curves, please) and am looking for a fantasy milieu. What say you..?
Without getting into mechanics and the pros and cons thereof, I always thought Alderac Entertainment's L5R RPG was rather smashing! Of course, I am a die-hard Wick fan, so I am not so enamored of the direction the world story has taken. Rokugan New Era doesn't do it for me at all (sorry Shawn - can't stand your stuff at all.)
By "fantasy" I assume here you meant "medieval fantasy" or close to that.
It really depends on the type of system and universe you want. Many do their job extremely well.
If you want something close to 3.X in complexity and versatility, you can go with Rolemaster. It's actually one of the systems that inspired 3E (since Monte Cook worked on it extensively before working for TSR).
If you want some Dark Fantasy, you can go with Stormbringer for the epic aspects it provides, or Cthulhu Dark Ages if you want something even more horrific and mundane/historical.
If you want to go full speed ahead with fantasy, magic, faeries but still want some believability to it, Ars Magica is a great change of pace.
If you want myth, if you want a full-fledged world with a nearly unmatched depth to it, you go for RuneQuest with Glorantha for a setting. If you want steampunk style fantasy with an epic sound to it, you go for RuneQuest/Hawkmoon.
The list could go on and on. Really. There are many great games out there.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a no-brainer. It's an excellent system that doesn't get bogged down, and even after playing for a few months, skeletons are just as dangerous as they were to begin with. For whatever reason, the role-play factor is much higher and much more fun than anything I've had with D&D.
I've also enjoyed playing Reign over the last few months as well. It's really does do a complete 360 from most systems I've played, but once you've grasped the system, it's a lot of fun.
I can also give a thumbs up to Savage Worlds and GURPS as well. Both systems I've enjoyed, but haven't played in a while.
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay...or whatever reason, the role-play factor is much higher and much more fun than anything I've had with D&D...
You're right, and this is a little hard for me to pin down. When I've played WHFRP and D&D with the same group, they tend to expect more crunch in D&D, and whine if they don't get it. But in Warhammer, even the miniatures wargaming version, there's a lot of fluff going on, and players seem very happy to hear a story and give one. I really don't know why. I've met a few who claim to enjoy Warhammer more because it's more accessible to them intellectually. Like someone else mentioned, it's medium/light fantasy, and very much so modeled after our own world.
OK, now that Fourth Edition has come about, I'm doing some shopping to see if there's a better system out there. I like sound rules, weapons' damage to be a single die (no bell-curves, please) and am looking for a fantasy milieu. What say you..?
Earthdawn ist very good (still in print from an australian or new zealandish company)
RuneQuest 3 is extremely good, but the world is ... different :) Don't know the Mongoose RQ yet.
WFRP (Warhammer frp) ist extra-ordinairy, but never support Games Workshop!
German Midgard is very good-but german :)
GURPS Fantasy is what you want it to be.
edit: palladium Fantasy of course - the rules are ... well, workable. The world is fun, especially the northern part of it :) Played it some years and enjoyed it, though I never had a game with so much house.rules.
WHRP is awesome. And RoleMaster is being reissued! That might not satisfy the 'one die requirement', though...
Gotta love the Rolemaster- any game that has crits that allow folks to go into shock and/or bleed out gets my vote.
Talislanta perhaps?
I wouldn't say it's the best, but I love it for the flavor, and the ambiance of the setting: Agone RPG. Unfortunately, it's no longer in print, and only saw minimal support in English (five products overall including a GM's screen). There's apparently tons of stuff out there in French for it. The mechanics take a little getting used to. But the setting is brilliant.
You can still find it for cheap online though, so if by some miracle you have a spare 30 bucks or so, it's easy to pick up all the material for it.
Pendragon. Hands down.
Best system ever invented , awesome personality traits for characters, tailored for campaign play.
The best game I ever read and played, with COC.
Regards
My top three:
Ars Magica (3rd/4th Ed): Does historical fantasy with powerful magic and does it very well. The Ars Magica magic system is one of the best RPG magic systems ever developed, IMO. Also, the ability to use real-world history and myth (only slightly changed) for the setting adds a tremendous depth and richness to the game.
HERO System (4th Ed): This is the one rule-set that you can use to run any fantasy setting (or anything else, for that matter). Fantasy Hero contains a lot of suggestions on how to run a "typical" fantasy campaign and the HERO Bestiary contains a lot of "classic" monsters, but the only limits are in your imagination.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st Ed): Dark and gritty fantasy at its best (worst? ;-) ). The Enemy Within is a great campaign that can be tailored to fit just about any game, but is purely awesome in the WFRP setting.
And the runner up:
Shadowrun: Take out the technology and near future setting, add a few replacement options for non-mage/non-adept characters, and tweak a handful of rules to make this a very playable fantasy RPG. Hell, leave in the technology and just play in a RIFTS-style setting using the Shadowrun rules... To this day, thinking about how RIFTS could have turned out if developed using the Shadowrun rules as the base, instead of the kludged-together Palladium/Battletech rules makes me want to cry.
I am also going to assume you meant medieval fantasy.
GURPS Fantasy utilizes a solid system and is as fantasy as you can get. It's fun and smooth. If you like GURPS, that is.
Other than that there is Palladium Fantasy but I recommend avoiding anything Palladium like it has ebola. Unless you are a fan of Rifts or Heroes Unlimited, then go for it. Personally, I hate the system.
If you're into historic gothic horror, which is kind of fantasy, you could pick up the new Vampire the Requiem's Requiem for Rome. It's Vampire in Rome, exactly as the name suggests. I love Vampire and was glad to see a historic setting for the new rules, I loved the old Dark Ages stuff.
Another vote for Ars Magica.
Another shout out to the excellent Earthdawn. Easily the most overlooked masterpiece of game history.
HERO System (4th Ed): This is the one rule-set that you can use to run any fantasy setting (or anything else, for that matter).
I played in a 4e one shot last weekend. I smiled to myself as I looked over all the At Will, Encounter and Daily powers thinking, “I could have done all this in Hero.”
Talislanta perhaps?
Yes.
If you want to try something very different and very narrative, try Luke Crane's Burning Wheel. Pretty original stuff.
For some horror fantasy -- and totally different from D&D -- I LOVE sorcerer. Pick up the Sorcerer and Sword supplment.
I have two very good suggestions though one might be very hard to find, except maybe in PDF form.
1. White Wolfs Mage Dark Ages, its focuse on magic users but you can esily add Fighter types, also get Changeling the Dark Ages for mythical creatures. You may need Vampire Darkages for all the rules but it would be well worth it. No it does not have to play it as darkly as the those books intend, just use the rules.
2. Not many people like the system I know, but Palladium is actually really really fun once you get into it. If you have players who are used to RPG's the sytem is easy to learn in a night or two. However there is the issue of powercreep.
TTFN
I'm going to throw my vote in for Savage Worlds. Extremely flexible system that can handle any type of fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc. genre equally well.
I have run Conan, Birthright, and Dark Sun campaigns using this RPG and love it to bits. Fan support is probably almost as good as Paizo's too.
Check it out for sure.
I've got a certian fondness for the BESM fantasy supplements, but with GOO gone you might be luckly if you found them. Plus I don't think it's quite what the OP is looking for.
$0.02 from me.
At one time I was entertaining the idea of using BESM 2.0 for an Eberron campaign. I have not had a chance to play or run a BESM 2.0 game, but the system seems solid enough. I do not like the art, however, to the point I find it turning me off to the game itself.
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If you want to try something very different and very narrative, try Luke Crane's Burning Wheel. Pretty original stuff.
Seconded. Burning Wheel is a great system, and also gets my vote for "Best Value in RPGs". The main rules come in two digest-sized books for $25, the Monster Burner is only another $20, and the long-awaited Magic Burner is finally on its way out this September, and should be $25. That is a truly complete system that is clean and simple for $70, about the list price of two of the 4e core books alone. And by complete, Monster Burner gives a number of creature write-up, that would be fun for the GM to play against the players, as well as very nice rules for creating monsters; and the Magic Burner has at least another half-dozen completely different magic systems over and above the main books' Sorcery, Faith, and Spell Songs.
On the BW wiki, there are sample chapters of some of the books in the "Downloads" area if you want to check into it before buying.
Another cool thing is the community around BW, as evidenced by their forums; it's a lot like Paizo's community around Pathfinder, if a little smaller and more 'intimate'.
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Have you looked at Chaosium's new Basic Roleplaying? I love RQ and was going to use Mongoose until I picked up BRP. It seems to to the best version of the system to date.
How is this latest version different from the pre-AH Runequest or the (very) Basic Role-Playing rules from the 1980's? I'm interested in hearing more.
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Have you looked at Chaosium's new Basic Roleplaying? I love RQ and was going to use Mongoose until I picked up BRP. It seems to to the best version of the system to date.How is this latest version different from the pre-AH Runequest or the (very) Basic Role-Playing rules from the 1980's? I'm interested in hearing more.
It is not tremendously different. What is does extremely well is to take the core BRP and allow a GM to expand it based on the desired level of simulation and style of play. The new BRP feels like a RPG toolkit. Heck, it even has a checklist you can copy and hand to your players so they know which optional elements you will be including in the game.
BRP includes differing levels of technology - primitive, medieval, modern, and advanced. It includes different kinds of powers like magic, mutations, super powers, and the like so you can add elements from different genres. The really slick part is the modularity of the rules. You can choose to use options like fatigue, sanity, hit locations, and dozens of advanced options.
The new BRP is not quite as scaled down as the original booklet. I would say the core mechanics in BRP are like those in CoC or Stormbringer and can be expanded to have the same level of detail found in RuneQuest or Superworld.
The main reason I like it better than the Mongoose RQ rules is that it does not try to be like D&D. Mongoose's inclusion of incorporated runes and legendary abilities did not appeal to me and seemed to be an attempt to emulate feats and abilities (su, ex, etc.).
They say that they are going to continue to publish more material to cover different settings or styles of play. I hope they do because the BRP system is absolutely fantastic and always has been.
Two new systems that I am looking at are True20 by Green Ronin and Castles & Crusades by Troll Lord Publishing. C&C is kind of like an updated 2nd Edition D&D while True20 uses just a d20.
In my opinion, True20 is a solid system. My only real beef with it is racial level adjustments.
What do folks like about True20 that makes if their preferred system?
The classes/roles are much more generic. For me, they do not feel so constrictive. Powers take a more building block approach. I like fortune points. I like toughness saves. I like characteristics as just their bonus. The True20 Companion lays out a point buy system for building further classes/roles.
Having said all that, Hero is still my preferred system. Most of the things True20 does, Hero does even better. One advantage I would give True20 over Hero is that True20 is a little more rule light. I believe they sacrificed versatility for less complexity.
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In my opinion, True20 is a solid system. My only real beef with it is racial level adjustments.It's funny. When I looked at True20 the impression I came away with was - why wouldn't I just play 3.5?
Did I miss something? What do folks like about True20 that makes if their preferred system?
For me, the ability to 'tune' a character. If I were to play a character with the 'Warrior' role, by the feats I take I can replicate the more traditional Barbarian, Paladin, or Ranger. Or blend them. Want to play a paladin with NO magic spells. OK. Or a paladin with GREATER access to magic? That's OK too.
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Probably the german game Das Schwarze Auge - I really like their Skill System, though both character creation and combat can be painfully slow - and the size of their world is a joke (seriously - I heard long time players joking that you could see right across the great desert on a clear day...). I must admit that I missed some fantasy games like Warhammer yet...
Has anybody tried the O.R.E system of Godlike or Wild Talents?
The designers have some preview material on their site ==> http://www.arcdream.com/
I played a game for a while and really enjoyed it although I had a few heated discussions about how magic works (or doesn't)
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I liked a lot the Artesia RPG (based on the awesome comic by Mark Smylie, and developed by the author himself), which is a very detailed and customised version of the FuZion set of rules.
Fantasy, with a distinct gritty theme (in the WHFRPG style, with even less magic), and highly versatile.
Also, the character background generation stuff is simply too good to be missed.
I was always fond of the Palladium Fantasy RPG. Same basic system as other Palladium products (Ninjas & Superspies, Heroes Unlimited, etc) and a very well-designed campaign world.