Hot answers tagged system-recommendation
29
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 ...
20
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 ...
18
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 ...
17
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 ...
17
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 ...
14
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... ...
14
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 ...
13
Dungeons & Dragons 3.x – Too Many Traps
The first tabletop RPG I played was Dungeons & Dragons 3.5ed.
I recommend against 3.5 (or Paizo’s “3.75,” Pathfinder, which is really not all that different). It’s complicated and has a ton of rules, plus a lot of options that are (apparently intentionally) “traps” ...
13
Lacuna Part 1: The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City (second attempt) handles navigating dreamscapes and bizarre dream logic. Characters play agents that enter the shared dream of humanity to remove anomalous elements and cure people of mental illnesses. It's very Inception-like, but I don't recall it doing anything explicit about dreams ...
13
The FATE system (I'm most familiar with the Dresden Files RPG which uses it) has this as a major part of character creation. In DFRPG we answer (in collaboration with the other players and the GM) the following questions are part of character creation:
Background: Where did you come from? (PC's youth, his life as a "normal person" before getting embroiled ...
13
I played in a short campaign that was literally us versus the Monstrous Compendium. We created a simple system: Saving or restoring the game required sacrificing a magic item. Since the randomized haul from each randomized monster usually included at least one magic item, it worked well enough in practice for the half-dozen sessions we ended up playing.
12
While the choice is not mutually exclusive between the Essentials line and the classic 4e line I have to strongly recommend the essentials line if you are starting out, especially if that start is the Red Box. Reasons:
Adventure continuity. From Red Box you can play the DM kit adventure Reavers of Harkenwald and from there jump into the Monster Vault ...
12
I've had some experience with this, but generally, this is what I would do. If they are not experienced gamers, then don't worry about the system or rules, and don't let them worry about them. From what you're describing, you shouldn't be trying to find a system to fit the gamers, you need to train the gamers to the experience of Role Play and imagination. ...
12
The short answer is, you want FATE. But, keeping in mind your mention of generic systems, here's why FATE works and why it won't be as bad as you think, and it's all to do with a version of FATE called Dresden Files.
Supports fantasy settings
Dresden Files takes place in an urban fantasy world. The title character is a Chicago PI who happens to also be a ...
12
The system/setting that springs to mind is Savage Worlds and Hellfrost. As per your criteria:
Fast paced
Combat in Savage Worlds is specifically designed to be quick, and mostly resolves one way or the other within 5 rounds. It also deals with larger numbers of opponents without a great deal of slow down in how things are calculated, and minimises the ...
12
I'm a fan of Burning Wheel's combat. It's brutal, but rarely deadly. Take a mid-level wound and you're basically useless, fighting at a severe handicap. None of this nonsense of having 1hp and still fighting at full strength.
Plus, there are three ways to resolve a martial conflict: the full Fight! rules (for melee), the Range & Cover rules (for ranged ...
11
Contrary to popular belief, original Gamma World and d20 Future aren't the only ways to do science fiction with a D&D-like system. While those have been out of print for years, a small independent publisher has been quietly and steadily producing Stars Without Number and a stream of supplements in print and PDF. It recently won a design award, the judges ...
11
My favorite martial arts RPG is Feng Shui: Action Movie Roleplaying, by Robin Laws. Its original incarnation was based on the Shadowfist card game. It has a fast and easy +d6/-d6 with exploding 6'es system, and a whole variety of mystical "Fu powers" you can choose from Hands Without Shadow to Drunken Fist to Flying Sword to King On The Water to Unyielding ...
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Leverage
If you haven't seen the (sadly, now-cancelled) show Leverage, you're missing out. The seasons had their ups and downs, but taken as a whole it was a good show and I'll miss it. The conceit was that a group of the best bad guys in the world took it upon themselves to be good guys. Basically, it presented a caper movie every week. The genre is ...
11
Mouse Guard has a modification for this: Realm Guard
Mouse Guard ($20 pdf purchase link, review) is a game about patrolling the borders between a safe haven for noncombatants and the dangers of the outside world. In the original game you're mice, but Realm Guard is a free Fourth Age LotR setting modification.
MG is moderately crunchy as RPGs go, so it has ...
10
First Roleplay, System Later.
I would say: don't worry so much about your players & system.
What I mean is that most role-playing systems aren't as hard and difficult to comprehend as quantum physics. If they are adults with ability to count what they see on a dice, they will probably prevail. Math isn't the hard part. With that in mind, you shouldn't ...
10
FATE, specifically Legends of Anglerre which is is a Fantasy themed FATE game. The core book for it is the only book you need.
Now, I am generally negative towards generic systems like GURPS or FATE. That's because I have a real hard time getting into them - they have so many extensions and content
FATE doesn't really have many rules. The LoA book is ...
10
You could try some of these GM-less RPGs! I'm picking games that at least have a fantasy bent to them, but they are not explicitly dungeon crawls. All but Polaris are one-shot games, so you can either replay them, try more than one, or play them between other games.
Fiasco, in which you play out a darkly humorous, Coen Brothers-esque disaster. If you ...
10
I was going to suggest mouseguard, but then you elaborated: "I mean class in the DnD v3.5 sense" on chat.
Don't try to hack this into D&D 3.5. You'll run into abstraction problems. If you want a system designed for this level of abstraction try Ars Magica, GURPS, or Mouseguard.
You're operating at the wrong level of granularity, both in action and in ...
10
AD&D/d20 based systems
If you want a D&D variant without feats then, as previously mentioned, you're going to be pretty much limited to Gamma World or house ruling your existing system as far as I know.
The only other way to retain the AD&D style mechanics (levelling and extra hit points) would be to move to AD&D3.5 and use something like ...
10
Dungeon World is an award-winning modern RPG with an old-school feel.
Yes on adventuring for fun, profit, and personal goals.
Yes on class-based system. There are eight classes, with the barbarian forthcoming.
Not rules heavy. You can make new rules, but, in general, fudging rules is not necessary. There are distinct spells, but they're also open to ...
10
The best fits for this that come to mind are The One Ring and Pendragon 4th Edition. A not quite as good fit would be one of the systems using Glorantha.
The One Ring
Tolkien's world, done quite well by Cubical 7. Set between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, it's intended to be a slowly darkening setting, but it needn't be run as slowly darkening.
...
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If you're not in a hurry, one of the expansions for the new Fate Core kickstarter includes a Magic System Toolkit.
In one of our earlier incarnations of the Fate system, Evil Hat co-founder Rob Donoghue lost his damn mind and included a chapter of over half a dozen different magic systems for use with the game. With this stretch goal, Rob will create a ...
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Houses of the Blooded is an interesting, “anti-D&D” take on nobles. It's a game about honor, tragedy, and being hindered by one's passions and desires. You will be the source of your own downfall.
In Houses, you play a noble. A character with a past. A character with a family, with vassals, responsibilities and duties. The Law is an ever-present ...
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Burning Wheel Revised has a Magic Burner supplement with alternative magic systems. In particular, the Art Magic or the Abstraction and Distillation systems sound like they could work for you.
Art Magic
With Art Magic, the sorcerer picks one or more of nine different effects (e.g., Hinder, Evoke, Destroy with Sorcerous Fire, Illusion) and the severity, ...
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