Hot answers tagged system-recommendation
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The Mongoose Publications flavor of Traveller is able to handle quite a bit of that.
The core rules cover ships (to about 28,000 cubic meters in size... not really that big!), have a simplistic system for cargo availability (it's no good as a simulation, but it plays well and serves dramaturgically), has a psionics system that works ...
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Ars Magica seems to fit your requirements quite nicely. Let's go over them one by one:
Freeform magic system. Ars Magica's magic is very flexible, being comprised of five Techniques (Create, Destroy, Move, Change and Know, roughly) and ten Forms (the four elements, Body, Mind, Animal, Plant, and so forth). Any spell is a combination of Technique+Form. The ...
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All of these games play excellently as one-shot games. I've run many of these at cons, sometimes as part of my "RPG speed dating" event (Indie by Storm) where I'll run 4-6 games in 4 hours. If I can give you a feel for a game in 40 minutes, then you can have a blast with it in 5 hours!
I have updated this answer with other folks' excellent answers, but ...
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Well, to a degree "more than surviving combat" is what you put into it... But here's some good ones I own and have read or used.
All Flesh Must Be Eaten uses the Unisystem like most of Eden Studio's games; it has a large number of supplements for everything from kung fu zombies to wild west zombies. It's a toolkit game where you can make the zombies work ...
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There are thousands of role-playing games in many genres, and hundreds (at least) of free ones. So in general, there's lists like the Free RPG Blog that catalog them all. Fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk, horror, superheroes, artsy stuff, etc.
If you specifically want something like Dungeons & Dragons, the successor to D&D Third Edition, called ...
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As noted in the comments, there are a lot of axes to compare role playing games on. Here are a few:
Rules Heavy/Light
D&D tends to be pretty heavy in terms of rules complexity. There are a fair number of special cases, but a lot of them are variations on the basic concept of "roll a d20 and modify it with the appropriate stat." You can find more ...
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Ars Magica
Ars Magica has a set of 5 techniques (to create, to perceive, to change, to destroy, and to control) and 10 forms (animal, air, water, body, plant, fire, image, mind, earth, and power). You can combine the techniques and the forms to quite literally create effects of that combination on the fly, and then research spells for easier/more powerful ...
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From my experience, your number 3 is key: Availability to PCs. If something is supposed to be mythical, it gets scientific automatically. Once players know the mechanics behind it, their brain will do calculations in their head. Thats not even a conscious process. People cannot "un-know" things.
Example: D&D, the party encounters some random guy, he ...
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D&D 4e has Skill Challenges whereby the group has to succeed at multiple skill checks (the number depending on the difficulty) before accumulating 3 failures. The choice of skills boils down to whatever the players can justify.
The Essentials red box (spoilers ahead!) has a nice example in the prewritten adventure "Talking to the Dragon" which gives ...
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Just play whatever the rest of your group wants to play. I was like this when I first started with my current group. I contributed almost nothing to the story other than the actual actions of my character, and frequently had to be explicitly asked what I wanted to do. Fast forward about 15 years, we still game together, and sometimes when we reminisce ...
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Talk to your players, and you don't need to trick your players into playing a game they don't like.
My advice is to actually sit down and talk to your players about running a sci-fi style game and for your entire group to actually sit down and pick out a game that suits everyone's needs.
"My problem is my players" is the wrong atitude to have in this ...
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The original Runequest was a lot like that: the world was quite magical, and most PCs had some magic available to them. Experience worked just like you're thinking about. When you used a skill, you checked it off, and if you could roll higher than that skill during the downtime, it'd improve. It was thus easier to get better at a skill the worse you were at ...
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There are LOTS of free RPG's.
There are several ways to find them.
RPGNow and DriveThruRPG
RPGNow and DriveThruRPG (same company, two interfaces) has a number of Free RPG's.
Finding them, however, is getting tricky. The key is to search for the term "Quickstart"... and see if one shows you the genre you want.
RPG Geek
RPGG has a list of Free RPG's. ...
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I was in exactly the same boat as you a year ago: introduced to Fate with Diaspora, loved it, and then wanted to capture than in a fantasy setting. This is where I went with it:
Dresden Files RPG has a comprehensive, flavourful, flexible, and very Fate-like magic system that easily translates to a fantasy setting. For an incredibly-good explanation of its ...
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FATE
The core of the system comes down to describing the character and the kinds of skills you can effectively use. The systems uses Aspects, Skills, Stunts and Extras to do this.
Skills are easy, they are ratings on a ladder from -1 to 8 of just how good you are at doing something. You get a good handful of these from a well-rounded basic skill list. What ...
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C°ntinuum, a game from the 1990s, is about this very thing. Player characters are time-travelers who range up and down the timelines of their existence, having adventures and trying to avoid or resolve paradoxes that arise. Complicated, but fun.
If you're not looking to add a new game system entirely, consider giving your time traveler a certain number of ...
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For various in depth takes on this, see The 12 RPGs Every Gamer Should Play Before They Die (Gnome Stew), Ten Games You Have To Play Before You Die (Geek Related, me!)
I remember going through the process of breaking out of the D&D Ghetto (tm) into other games, and certain games did a lot to expand my understanding of what you can do with the field. ...
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For some reason a lot of the Western RPGs out there have a lot of mystical junk mixed in, Deadlands being the coolest of the lot. You can always "file off the magic" but if you are looking to use published products without fooling around, you definitely want a Western RPG tuned for that.
I own two of those. The first is Boot Hill, the original Western RPG ...
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I suggest checking out Pathfinder, Paizo's successor to 3.5 D&D.
Its combat system is an improvement over 3.5, and easier to learn than 3.5, while still keeping several familar factors.
The Ultimate Magic book has words of power, and alternate but compatable spell construction system which can, with a little practice, be used on the fly. It also has ...
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The answer really depends on what you like, but here's the top three I'd recommend, and why:
Primetime Adventures: The rules are simple and the game does a good job of stealing the format of the serial TV show. You can play in any setting. Possible upside or downside: it's designed for long-term play, 5 or more sessions.
The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach: Again, the ...
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Universalis gives everyone pennies to "pay" to make a thing true. The points replenish by doing things the system wants to encourage, such as getting involved in conflicts, win and lose. This basic dynamic can be adapted in a variety of ways.
Fiasco has a fixed number of dice available to roll. They serve as a pacing mechanic, with the story twist happening ...
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More social interaction.
Good excuse to get together with friends.
Tabletop RPGs are generally more "open-ended" than MMOs; meaning there's more freedom of action for your character, and you're (hopefully) not stuck fighting the very same encounters over and over again.
More reliance on your own imagination, which leads to a more satisfying gaming ...
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The Fireborn RPG, released in 2004, features player characters who are dragons, shapeshifted to hide among humans in the modern day. Key to gameplay are "flashback" sequences, reflecting the great age and historical impact of dragonkind — it's a little like Highlander that way.
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D&D 4e looks like the best choice. You can play it such that it feels more like a wargame and the decisions the characters make are based on tactics rather than feeling.
Edit - This really depends on how you put emphasis on rewards in play. As a GM, you are responsible for setting the tone of the game. If you reward for acting, players will think that's ...
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Yes, The system you're looking for is 4th edition with the house rule of "level up every session".
This is actually a remarkably popular house rule and it doesn't impact 4e adversely at all. I would, personally, recommend every other session just to allow people to be used to a level (when I levelled every session, the changes (especially in epic) were... ...
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The One Ring
Published by Cubicle 7, The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild is, afaik, the most recent and most modern rpg adaptation of Tolkien's immense world. It's a relatively simple and modern game systems-wise (and you can always decide to leave off some rules to help yourself and your players ease into them later), with both the beautiful ...
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Echoing some earlier answers (which I upvoted), I'd suggest:
Universalis (really open ended, and will teach you mechanics and social interaction)
Sorcerer (blow your mind)
Dogs in the Vineyard (blow your mind again as you watch people make tough decision in a easy system)
Burning Wheel (crunchy tolkien goodness)
PTA / Primetime adventures (Play any TV show ...
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In a tabletop RPG, you really are the only one who can save the town.
In a tabletop RPG, that dragon isn't being killed every ten minutes by different heroes.
In a tabletop RPG, you're not limited to a choice of six bland faces and ten idiotic hairstyles.
In a tabletop RPG, female characters can wear armor that covers their midriff.
In a tabletop RPG, ...
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Various systems have extended rules for social conflicts. For example:
The Dying Earth RPG has a back-and-forth dice-rolling mechanic. I say something, I roll to see whether I convince you; you reply, you roll to see whether you convince me. Skulduggery uses the same mechanics.
Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits mechanics frames social conflict similarly to ...
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Time & Temp is a role-playing game about temp workers being sent through time to fix problems. (They use temp workers because they're not historically significant should anything bad happen to them.) It's very much a Bill & Ted-style time travel than anything super crunchy.
T&T has a special mini-game mechanic for handling creative uses of ...
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