It depends a lot on what you want...
If you want brilliant world and fluff and are willing to put up with an old, unbalanced and eccentric system... Then anything by Palladium is for you. I love it but I am slightly crazy.
IMHO Rolemaster 2nd Ed is the best fantasy RPG system ever. It is front loaded, complex and deadly, if you have the stamina to take the time to understand the game you will see why it craps on D20 from a massive height. The new edition is in a free play test over at Iron Crown and it looks great and easier
GURPS is another favourite of mine, so flexible. Ken Hite, who has written a lot of cool stuff for the game is in the same level of kooky brilliance as Brandon Hodge. The Horse Clans sourcebook is one of the best settings books ever.
Well there is all sorts
Savage World
13th Age
Fate
Their all pretty big at the moment.
But there is just so much other stuff out there, it is pretty difficult to know where to begin.
If you go a little further outside the window you've described, Call of Cthulhu seems to be pretty healthy right at the moment, with projects for the system having raising nearly a million dollars worth of backing on kickstarter in the year and a half or so and a near record breaking number of scenarios released this year.
From wiki
The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS, is a tabletop role-playing game system designed to allow for play in any game setting. It was created by Steve Jackson Games and first published in 1986 at a time when most such systems were story- or genre-specific.
By outside what I described what do you mean? I looked into that one but couldn't figure out really what it was about (didn't look long as I was at work)
It is a 1920's horror larp, based on the writing of HP Lovecraft, the father of 20th century horror.
You play an investigator, who is poking their nose into terrible secrets that man was not meant to know.
It is a game where characters die horrible deaths and go mad, but if they are lucky, win small victories against an uncaring universe, allowing humanity to continue on in idiot primate ignorance for a few more years.
It is pretty much the anti-DnD. Combat is your worst option, talking/investigating events your best option. Monsters kill you, you don't kill them.
A lot of fun, but not for everyone.
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From wiki
The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS, is a tabletop role-playing game system designed to allow for play in any game setting. It was created by Steve Jackson Games and first published in 1986 at a time when most such systems were story- or genre-specific.
I have a working hypothesis that gurps does not actually exist. It is in fact a massive, elaborate practical joke at my expense, which is played on me by the internet at large. I base this on the fact that I have never meet a real life person who has admitted to playing it, nor have I ever seen a game of it being played by real people. Add to this that I see it sold, almost no-where, and that, on the rare occasions I have had the chance to look through a Gurps book, I have had trouble accepting the supposed fact that it was in fact game material, not elaborate, procedural generated, Glossolalia. Add to this that every description of how the system works leaves me doubtful that anyone would actually play anything so stupidly and needlessly complex.
Shadowrun = Tolkien + The Matrix + Bladerunner, Kick arse game lots of fun.
ZN dude don't diss GURPS... GURPS is like a cat, when it knows you don't like it or aren't a GURPS person and it will inflict pain on you out of a perverse sense of pleasure.
I looked into shadowrun too. It doesn't seem to have a lot of classes. The necessary ones of course but not too many others. Doesn't leave much choice. Though I could be wrong. It sounds interesting definitely
it doesn't have classes. Classes are a peculiarly DnD kind of thing. Most games just don't have them.
In fact, in shadow run your choices are potentially much more varied.
I definitely recommend Sixcess. I ran it at GenCon, and it is an easy to learn and run system.
I don't wanna get into something that I can't find a game for lol
Try asking your local game store which RPGs they sell the most of besides PF/D&D. That should provide a general idea of which ones you're more likely to find a game for. Also, they might have some idea of which people to contact for purposes of finding a game.
I looked more into it and I'm not sure if I like how it's split across so many expensive books :(. <snip>
Unless I'm wrong and there's only one book you need really to play.
If you're talking about Shadowrun, don't worry, you only need the core rulebook (the big one that's just called "Shadowrun") to play. All the other books that say something like "A core shadowrun supplement" or "A core Shadowrun book" aren't actually necessary. Useful, yes, but not necessary.
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Personally, I'd find a group first and see what they're playing rather than picking a game and then looking for a group.
I think it's far more important to like the people you're playing with than to like the system.
The only game I ever really played besides DnD was Rifts.
Varied more how so? I definitely like the fantasy and cyberpunk combo
Because the game is skill based, and you get to choose any combination of skills.
44 active skills
+ 20 knowledge skills
Each of which can be specialized.
Each active skill represents a niche role in a Shadowrun.
Where in Pathfinder, you play say a fighter, and what fighters do is hit things with big sticks(and almost nothing else), in shadowrun, if you set out to play the equivalent of a fighter, there are multiple ways to go about it.
You might be gun-fu, magical martial artist, a cyberware enhanced street samurai, an all meat but very highly specialized sniper, or a tribal archer who blends shamanic magic, and combat prowess.
And then on top of that, you might be specialised in stealthy intrusion, a social faceman, the team fixer, or say, a research specialist.
Then on top of that you will certainly have a knowledge skill set, which is largely untied to your combat role, which you can use to customises your character still further.
And that is before you even get into the equivalent of feats, or equipment.
Character variety is hampered somewhat by a trend in many players minds towards Hyper-Specialisation (I am not sure I think that it is an expecially cyberpunk idea, but hey.), but still, there are huge numbers of combinations of skills.
Is there a lot of combat or is gameplay played more towards these skills?
Its up to the GM
In the "modules" its balanced around investigation, meeting contacts, finding clues, gathering intel, as well as combat.
"Experience" is about overcoming (with or with out combat)obstacles.
From Wiki
Players are awarded Karma points as a game progresses. In third edition and earlier, these points are usually added to a total called Good Karma, which can be used to boost attributes and skills. Skills that are already well-developed cost more Good Karma than skills which are undeveloped, which helps encourage specialized characters to become more flexible by spending Good Karma on weaker attributes. Karma also makes characters more powerful in general because every tenth (or twentieth for metahumans) point is added to the Karma Pool instead of Good Karma. The Karma Pool allows players to re-roll dice or "purchase" additional dice in certain situations. Karma can even be used to avoid certain death, at the cost of all Good Karma and Karma Pool points. In fourth edition, Karma Pool is replaced by a new attribute called Edge which can be used in most of the same ways as the third edition Karma Pool. Experience and character advancement is still tracked with Karma, although Good was dropped from the name as it no longer needs to be distinguished from the old Karma Pool.
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It sounds really awesome. I may have to try that one at some point. I may wait for fifth edition though. I don't think it's too far out, right ?
I've heard of mutants and masterminds as well. Is that another popular one?
I love Mutants and Masterminds, but being a d20 based game it can also get a little bit combat heavy (although the combat is simplified thankfully).
Running Mutants and Masterminds you can fill a lot of different comic book genres, anywhere from an investigative Batman/Question/Daredevil style game (which I ran for a few sessions to my player's delight) to a more Four-Colour Avengers blockbuster style (which I have also done).
I think the best model is to run a PL 6 or 7 "High School Heroes", like X-Men, Teen Titans or M&M's own setting's Claremont Academy (in Freedom City). M&M is still my #1 favorite game.
Character creation can be daunting, but as long as you clearly establish the genre conventions and don't get too bogged down in details, the game itself runs smoothly.
The best part is the "hero point" economy, it's what allows you to have those very genre satisfying early defeats for the heroes so that they can bounce back and take down the villain later. Always err on being too generous with Hero Points rather than stingy and you'll be golden.
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Well for Mutants and Masterminds all you need is the core rulebook and a d20.
Or you can read all the rules Right Here For Free.
I really recommend the books though, because of the fantastic production values.
Problem with M&M (the edition I played) was that the damage cap made it generally true that everyone did the same damage, maybe with different colours for variety, and that combat, due to its mechanisms, generally ended in the winning side beating down on the losing side for several rounds before someone was actually knocked out or otherwise unable to fight. It turned into more "gangsta beatdown" than superhero combat.
Not sure of how popular it is, but the Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin is pretty fun and a nice variant on a D&D style fantasy RPG. Easy to learn. They call the system it uses AGE (adventure game engine). I believe they have some generic, non-Dragon Age material coming out for it in 2014. The defunct Kobold Quarterly had a number of articles over its run to add AGE options.
Well, depending on the genre you want to run...
GURPS, the Generic Universal Role-Playing System from Steve Jackson Games, is a ruleset that can be adapted (in theory) for any genre. It is a skill-based game, not a level-based game, giving players much finer control over what their character can do. I've played in several long-lasting GURPS campaigns over the years.
I prefer using GURPS for modern-day, recent historical, and science-fiction gaming. I think it strikes a very good balance between abstraction and realism. I've played in GURPS space opera games, "X-Files" type games, and a very weird game the crossed genre lines. (We were psychic Federal agents who allied with a coven of vampires to prevent the Bavarian Illuminati from making contact with aliens who wanted to use New York City as a blood sacrifice to summon Hastur the Unspeakable.)
For super-hero gaming, it's very hard to top Champions from HERO Games. Highly customizable, with a great combat system although character creation is rather intimidating to new playes (and very math-intensive).
For horror gaming, there's no subsititue for Call of Cthulhu. You don't actually need to use the Cthulhu mythos in your horror game-- there are plenty of options to use other horror tropes. No game I've ever played was able to conjure the amount of dread as this one.
For cosmic-level games with High Weirdness, I'd recommend Amber Diceless Role-Playing, long out-of-print, but soon to be restored with Lords of Gossamer and Shadow. The PCs have vast power in the multiverse, allowing them to traverse the shadowy dimensions into alternate worlds-- all of which are mere reflections and shadows of a higher level of reality.
In GURPS you can run any genre of game you want. The problem is crossing them.
dynamite is awesome...
Na, he meant dynamite.
CoC combat proves the old adage that "everything is better with dynamite".
Nuke it from orbit, only way to be sure.
I actually hold that dynamite is the secret solution to all lifes problems.
The best solution is quite often to blow up the evil cult, whatever they have summoned, and the surrounding area (for good measure).
Indeed, the 1928 raid on Innsmouth being a good example, complete with the torpedoing of the reef the Deep Ones were living on. Also a good example of keeping the indestructible Mythos entities looming in the background and the defeat of their mortal servants being the more immediate issue.