• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

Favorite tabletop rpg?

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
Call of Cuthulu in different flavours – but you need a really good DM to make it scary. I like the problem that the more insane you are then the better you are at the adventure but less useful you are at not getting arrested or sectioned... and you usually get to blow up a building.


Cyberpunk – the first attempt I saw at a modern role-play. You could play a Rock star and my character managed to start a riot and stormed the villain's corporate HQ. Still got that play-list somewhere...


Never really fallen for D&D and gave up on GW stuff when it started costing so very very much [That will be £65 for the rule book, and £30 for the players guide and £20 for the creature guide, £25 for the adventure...]


For a table game – a home brew Spacehulk which had Eldar, Orks, Squats, DALEKS, Cybermen, Colonial Marines, Aliens, Predators – you get the idea... if the death count isn't in the hundreds then you aint trying!!!
 

JadedSidhe

Minstrel
I was a die-hard 2nd Edition Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse player and Storyteller. When they came out with 3rd Edition, I wasn't as thrilled with it. I stopped playing when they ended the 'old WOD' and launched their new, improved, recanned WOD.
 

Fargoer

Dreamer
I still remember the laughs we got off the critical hit table of the old MERP (Middle-Earth Roleplaying Game). Even though the game system itself was somewhat flawed, we had some good times with that. Of the more recent ones I'd say Praedor and Stalker by Burger Games, and GURPS by Steve Jackson.
 

Weaver

Sage
For me, the "best" table-top RPG was the Amber dice-less system. To be honest, it wasn't the system so much as the dice-less aspect of the game. If someone had a better fighting skill than you, then they won... unless you could role-play something to even the odds. And that was the key to it all... we role-played intensely. Without a lot of dice and rules to get in the way, the characters and stories that evolved were rich, detailed, and truly epic.

Granted, you had to game with good role-players whom you trusted, but if you had that... oh baby, you were rockin'!


Gaming without crunchy numbers to get in the way...! Are you trying to make an old man get all nostalgic and teary-eyed and stuff?

I have very good memories of a few Amber DRPG campaigns... Alas, if the players aren't accustomed to RPing without dice telling them what to do at every turn, or worse yet, won't have their characters take any action without the GM shoving them in one direction or another because the players themselves are such lumps - then you've got a problem. (I had a bad experience as GM recently. It was with a different system, because I knew better than to go diceless with those guys, but nevertheless...)

There are some possible drawbacks to the 'if you describe/RP your actions better, you win' guideline, but I'm all for it nevertheless. (There you have it, the One True Example - if I may be permitted an obscure but relevant pun - of when writers really are better gamers. *g*)

For most gaming, I like GURPS. I like to have a skills list, for one thing. Most gamers, in my experience, don't know how to craft a character background in description that explains their skills set(s) and where those came from. GURPS, because it uses dice, also gives the players some reassurance that there are rules and that the whole thing isn't merely GM's whim, and it gives the GM some backup if he/she has to put their foot down when a player tries to claim omni-competence "'cause my character's dad is Brand and he taught me everything he knows." (That was the entirety of one person's character background when he tried to join one of my old Amber campaigns.) GURPS isn't perfect - no game system is perfect - but it is nicely customizable and doesn't have too many weird assumptions about how things must work in imaginary settings... as long as you don't take the tech level table too seriously. :)

I never could get into D&D. Possibly because the whole THAC0 thing made no sense whatsoever to me. (It isn't harder to hit someone in plate metal armor than it is to hit someone in leather - a lot easier, in fact, all else being equal - it's just that the plate metal tends to absorb more of the damage that does land. And for that matter, why does any armor whatsoever, even a leather jerkin, prevent a magic-user from casting, but the same leather jerkin worn as clothing doesn't? If it's because armor is supposed to be an encumberance that interferes with the gestures used in casting, what abotu those long flared sleeves on the cliche wizard's robe? I've worn armor, and I've worn medieval clothing with long flared sleeves, and trust me, the long sleeves interfere more with arm movement than any armor... Okay, tangent rant done now.) And because the D&D games that I played in were run as pure orc-bashes with the "characters" being nothing beyond a bunch of stats on a piece of paper: some players didn't even bother to slap a name at the top of the character sheet. As someone who got into RPGs because they're another form of storytelling, I found this not only boring but also a bit offensive.

I played Rifts once, and liked it. Out of 9 PCs, only 2 were local to the Rifts setting, which was a lot of fun. (This is another 'don't try it with people you don't know and trust to be good RPers' thing.) My own character was someone who has, before and since, been a major character in a lot of my fiction. (And yes, this means that he wasn't one of the two Rifts-setting-derived characters.) And no Glitter Boys or whatever, which I have since been told made that campaign very unusual.
 

071095se

Acolyte
I would have to say Warhammer fantasy is my favourite. Mainly because of the quality of the miniatures, and the vividness of the world that citadel has created, that they are constantly expanding upon making it dynamic and exciting.
 

jrcarney52

Acolyte
Yeah! Old School Renaissance all the way! I'm totally a fan of Greyhawk and D&D 1st edition. I also like 2nd edition and Forgotten Realms.

Have you ever read Gary Gygax's "Gord the Rogue" novels? They're set in Greyhawk and totally evoke that old school, late-70s D&D feeling. Not the best novelistic technique, but the stories are great--rich, convoluted, D&D narratives with a lot of dungeon delving and and absurd encounters with monsters.
 

Shadow Fox

Dreamer
Personally I've played D&D 3.0, 3.5, and gave 4e and very concerted effort of liking until I stumbled into Pathfinder, which in my mind is what D&D 4e should have been, and delivered in what it promised. I personally still play pathfinder, but I understand that 4e is a lot easier for those new to pen and paper RPGs. I've also played old rules WOD, I tried GURPS (and failed due to it just taking too long to get started), I've played BESM, and I've done no-rules role play.

As it stands I favor Pathfinder above all others simply because, while it has the convenient structure of 3.5 D&D, it isn't weighed down by it and if you use the rules right, you can simulate a multitude of experiences that may not necessarily be stated in the rules but with which the rules can be tweaked without much effort to accomplish it.

The best part is that the Pathfinder setting is all about choices, and that I gives a lot of freedom to the players as well as, or more greatly to the DM, allowing for such a large variety of variation to come forth, for example, I've made all told about 56 different campaign worlds using the setting, most of them I simply have on hold for future campaigns that I made on a whim. Because of this, I feel that the guidelines and tool kits provide resources in order to put your story into focus and allow you to tell a story in an interactive manner, rather than being something that stymies creativity and storytelling, but then again, this is my opinion.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I don't like 4e at all. I like Pathfinder, but I think it is too rules-heavy. For d20 system games, check out Castles and Crusades. You can do anything in it that you can do in Pathfinder or D&D 3.X, but with a fast, light-weight rules system. It's really pretty cool.

You can even play in Golarion (the Pathfinder setting), and I've run Pathfinder published adventures in Castles and Crusades with ease. I've also run D&D 1e, 2e, and 3e adventures in it.
 
My friends and I mainly played D&D 2nd Edition but we were very flexable when it came to rules and such. I guess you could say they were more like guidelines. ;) We even found an old copy of 1st Edition Players Handbook and incorperated some of it into our D&D sessions. We played a lot of Greyhawk and Dark Sun w/ a little bit of Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft thrown in. We somehow got around Dragonlance. I think I still have a couple old Dark Sun adventures in my closet.

I also still have my old HeroQuest game w/ some of the expansion sets. I've been pondering if I should attempt to sell it or not. My wife seems to think that our kids may get use out of it some day.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
My friends and I mainly played D&D 2nd Edition but we were very flexable when it came to rules and such. I guess you could say they were more like guidelines. ;) We even found an old copy of 1st Edition Players Handbook and incorperated some of it into our D&D sessions. We played a lot of Greyhawk and Dark Sun w/ a little bit of Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft thrown in. We somehow got around Dragonlance. I think I still have a couple old Dark Sun adventures in my closet.

I also still have my old HeroQuest game w/ some of the expansion sets. I've been pondering if I should attempt to sell it or not. My wife seems to think that our kids may get use out of it some day.

We're playing a Castles & Crusades game in the Dragon's Egg subforum. It is an OGL/d20 game, but heavily inspired by 1e and a bit of 2e D&D. Some of the 1e people have even worked with this company. It's a nice system because the rules are lightweight, and you can use 1e/2e and 3e stuff almost right out of the box. Even Pathfinder stuff. Just make a few adjustments on the fly.
 
I have a ton of experience playing D&D 3.5e, so I guess that would be my favorite. I've also played 4e, but what I really want to play is Legends of the 5 Rings. It seems like an awesome system, I just haven't found the people to play yet.
 

ALB2012

Maester
We played Earthdawn and Shadowrun quite a bit and I used to run Warhammer, Starwars and Vampire. I co ran Dragon age as well. Unfortunately all my RPG mates decided to do grown up things like have kids so don't do much these days.
 

ThomasCardin

Minstrel
I am a dungeons and dragons player and DM. My friends and I started playing in the late '70's...making many of our own rules to support the ways we enjoyed playing. We did not go past 2nd edition, and only used some of the new rules, prefering to stick with a more free form game that allowed us to roleplay what we wanted to roleplay and not reduce EVERYTHING our characters could do to a table in a rule book.

We are all worldbuilders as well as players and had no trouble creating rules of thumb which governed our in-character actions with a simple roll of the dice <if it were even required>.

I have played some 3rd edition and 4th and they are just way too wargamming structured, with finite rules that detailed your characters limited actions...if your DM wasn't ready for your rogue to duck under his opponents guard and do some creative dagger work, it just wasn't going to happen <or he would throw the threat of an attack of opportunity at you which would reduce your ability to rollplay combat to exactly nil)

I also have played WoW and Everquest and Everquest 2...all quite obsessively. When I finally got tired of facing off against human greed and selfishness at every turn I quit them.
 
Top