NationStates Jolt Archive

Just wondering what you guys think the best pen-and-paper RPG is. I have to cast my vote for Rifts, I hate D&D, planning an adventure is a GM's nightmare. Plus Rifts blends Sci-Fi and magic perfectly, everything is balanced, and teamwork is essential. What say you guys?

They beat me up, but the jokes on them! I'm still a seventh level wizard!

There's MORE after D&D? Jesus Christ.


Then again, I play a lot of Final Fantasy games...

Legend of the Five Rings.

It's basically D&D(though the system is hugely different), except it's set world greatly reminiscent of medieval Japan. Instead of playing a knight in shining armor, you play an honorable samuraï warrior.

It's infinitely much more enjoyable than D&D.

Instead of playing a knight in shining armor, you play an honorable samuraï warrior.
Why the hell do people put that diaeretic i at the end of samurai? If you know anything about basic Japanese phonetics, you know that it is completely unnecessary. Each syllable is its own entity in Japanese, and there are no diphthongs or the like.

Though, on a more positive not, I can not say that I do not think that Sengoku Jidai is less appealing to roleplay in than mediaeval Europe!

AD&D all the way baby - 1st ed & 2nd ed. 3rd ed/3.5 ed suck the big one.

Down with Wizards of the Coast! TSR forever!

..and if you like Samurai, there's always Oriental Adventures :)

Why the hell do people put that diaeretic i at the end of samurai? If you know anything about basic Japanese phonetics, you know that it is completely unnecessary. Each syllable is its own entity in Japanese, and there are no diphthongs or the like.
Who gives a shit? People put an i there because there's an i there. Live with it, jeez.

And I prefer BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth) because of it's extremely free and flexible system. It works with everything and it's easy to make up new skills in it. Very GM friendly too.

Home brewed.

D&D was a good gateway 25 years ago, but even then there better systems available. The mechanics are terrible, and inconsistant to boot.
(If you actually like D&D's mechanics, do yourself a favor and find a copy of Arduin.)

For published systems:
SF: Classic Traveller or Mega Traveller
Fantasy: Empire of the Petal Throne (http://www.tekumel.com/) - the Swords & Glory edition of the rules (This is hands down the best published FRPG setting, ever.)
Horror: Call of Cthulhu rules. (Most of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying stuff is pretty good.)

I have yet to find a modern or cyberpunk system I really like. Twilight 2000 came the closest, and I used a meld of the first and second edition systems for my campaign.

Why the hell do people put that diaeretic i at the end of samurai? If you know anything about basic Japanese phonetics, you know that it is completely unnecessary. Each syllable is its own entity in Japanese, and there are no diphthongs or the like.
Who gives a shit? People put an i there because there's an i there. Live with it, jeez.

Neither of the standard systems of transliterating Japanese ionto the Roman alphabet uses "ï". Using one makes you look.... :rolleyes:

I like ,most of the gothic games but Chill is the best of them ^^
If I may call chill a gothic PaP... It's more horror PaP...

Best role-playing game? real life.

Best role-playing game? real life.
Are you "playing a role" in your real life? If so, why? Are you sheltering yourself from others? Afriad that they might not accept you? Are you viewing your life as a "game," keeping some sort of score, rating your success against others? Do you feel that the only way to be 'successful' is in relation to those around you?

There are some serious social issues. You know what would help you work some of these out? Playing some paper and pencil role-playing games.

NERDS!




oh, and the only rpg I will play is Call of Cthuhlu.

Are you "playing a role" in your real life?
Yes, many roles

If so, why?

Because its fun!



Are you sheltering yourself from others?

Nah, I tend to let people in on the game.

Afriad that they might not accept you?

They might be playing their own game.



Are you viewing your life as a "game," keeping some sort of score, rating your success against others?

Yes, I am a capitalist.



Do you feel that the only way to be 'successful' is in relation to those around you?

Yes.

Do I win anything?
I answered all the questions.

For published systems:
SF: Classic Traveller...

Yay! for the mighty Traveller and its mechanic of killing off player characters during character generation.

Call of Cthulu. Gotta love a game where if you "win", it drives your character insane! Hail Yog-Sothoth!! (scurries off to round room)

(scurries off to round room)

Oughtn't that be 'spherical'? The hounds will get through the angle between the floor and the walls elsewise.

Yay! for the mighty Traveller and its mechanic of killing off player characters during character generation.

Yep. I loved that. Especially when you went through the detailed creation in a suppliment like Mercenary and died somewhere in term 5. :D

Like em all...
what have I played? (in no Particualar Order)
D&D (Basic, Advanced, 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, 3.5)
Torg
Crimson Skies
Pendragon
Harn
CyberPunk
BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth)
GURPS (Love I.O.U.)
Paranoia
Privateers and Gentleman
Lace and Steel
Vampire: The Masqurade
Changling
Mage:The Ascention
StarFire
Star Treck
Babylon 5
Call of Chtullu
Marvel Superheroes
D.C. Universe
BattleTech
Beyond the Supernatural
Agency 13
MIB
Empire of the Petal Throne
Realms of the Unknown
Mekton
Champions
Feng Shui
It came from the Late, Late, Late show
Macho Women with Guns (and all the sequals)
Noir
Teenagers From Outer Space
Star Wars (old and new)
And many a Hybrid system that we sometimes cook up.

That would be the RPG-7 Saitan Truba 40mm. Them Russians sure make a nice RPG. Although the RPG 18 Mukha 64mm is nice, too.

Rule-wise i like the WoD products the best. Quick, elegant system.
Otherwise i am a Shadowrun fan. It has a good atmosphere, near future with fantasy elements, although i dislike the current drift into more magic, less cyber.

Yep. I loved that. Especially when you went through the detailed creation in a suppliment like Mercenary and died somewhere in term 5. :D

Having a character die of old age during chargen remains a particularly favourite memory of mine.

Voted for D&D but for combat I like Rune Quest.
But they all have good points. I've played most things even good old Tunnels and trolls!

That would be the RPG-7 Saitan Truba 40mm. Them Russians sure make a nice RPG. Although the RPG 18 Mukha 64mm is nice, too.

The RPG-29 (105mm, defeats ERA) is even sweeter. ;)
(RPG-18 was largely a failure.)

Traveller.

Wow, I didn't put Call of Cthulhu on the list because I thought no one knew about it... guess I was wrong.

Having a character die of old age during chargen remains a particularly favourite memory of mine.

In a weird way that reminds me of the highlight of the CoC Now campaign back in college:
My character discovered first hand exactly why using nukes on Chtullu is a very, very, very, very BAD idea. :headbang:

:D

Wow, I didn't put Call of Cthulhu on the list because I thought no one knew about it... guess I was wrong.

He he. :)

Wow, I didn't put Call of Cthulhu on the list because I thought no one knew about it... guess I was wrong.

He he. :)

My character discovered first hand exactly why using nukes on Chtullu is a very, very, very, very BAD idea.

Not only do you have an angry elder being from dimensions beyond all sane human understanding on your hands, you also have a radioactive elder being from dimensions beyond all sane human understanding on your hands?

Almost forgot - Paranoia is great, as is Hackmaster.

Not only do you have an angry elder being from dimensions beyond all sane human understanding on your hands, you also have a radioactive elder being from dimensions beyond all sane human understanding on your hands?

Exactly. (>.<)

Almost forgot - Paranoia is great, as is Hackmaster.

Oh yes! I remember being involved in the final round of that at a con - done as a LARP. I managed to set up the GM with a set of identical twin sisters (their first intro to RPGing) for mission briefers. They drove the players stark raving nuts! :D

The computer is your friend, you commie-mutant-traitor!

(Good, dood memories.)

Just out of curiosity, what systems have you played?

Me:
Too many to count, but a short list would be:
D&D
AD&D (1st ed.)
Arduin
EPT
TS
TS:SI
Gamma World (1st and 2nd ed.s)
Star Frontiers
Traveller (Classic and Mega)
Twilight 2000 (1st & 2nd ed.)
Call of Cthulhu
Call of Cthulhu Now
Call of Cthulhu Gaslight
Runequest (1st & 2nd ed.)
Skyrealms of Jorune (only once, seemed cool)
Paranoia (1st & 2nd ed.)
ICE's Middle-Earth
Bushido (FGU ed.)
Recon (pre-Palladium RPG Inc. 1st ed.)
Space: 1889
TORG
Shadowrun
GURPS Cyperpunk
Dark Conspiracy
Toon

Plus numerous home brewed.

Two Words- Final Fantasy

Numbers
2
3
4
7
9
11
and soon 12

All are the best RPG's EVER.
Don't anyone characterize all the final fantasys with 8, 10, and 10-2, they sucked majorly.

I can't really say what the best RPG is, neither by system nor setting. I'd be willing to recommend a GM, but it's hard to pack him off in a box (or send him round in .PDF form) if you don't happen to live in the same town... :)

It helps that none of the systems he uses (RPGs or Wargame) is entirely 'virgin' and there's usually some artful cross-polination with the ideas or plots or characters of other systems...

Systems/universes I've particularly enjoyed under his GMship, however are:
Star Wars - Yes, Jedi can levitate with enough D (as a fellow player found out) but if they get too cocky they forget (as same player did) that if they insist on floating everywhere then the dice can and will fail them at awkward times, leaving them falling unsubtley through the skylights of cavernous warehouses...
Space 1889 - Plenty of scope for situations, from helping a Victorian 'Buffy' kill vampires to the classic "Kill those pesky Martian War Machines by climbing up their legs while they are in motion and using heavy tools on their casings". Also a lot of opportunity to make mistakes with gunpowder, dynamite and other explosives (c.f. comment below about such materials being handled unwisely).
Babylon 5 - Particularly love the "Red and Green dice" rolling method of getting good and bad values (modified accordingly), though the hex-method for body-shots is a mixed blessing when you have to deal with 'mobile' Shadow implants replacing the odd limb or two, like a fellow player had to once...
In one of the middle-earth systems we tried, my wizard character disovered that an 'Air Wall' spell was a particularly useful method of disabling opposing ships in a dynamic Naval combat situation.
A "Wild West" system of some kind (might have been homegrown) in which I played a totally atypical character template from usual (i.e. I usually stumble into the "wimpy intelectual" role, i.e. engineer, wizard, etc, but this time I was the nastiest backstabbing gunslinger). With just the knowledge of the GM, I somehow managed to swindle the rest of the characters big-time with even their respective players under the impresion I was being as altruistic as usual... :)

Even if the characters died (usually through their player's stupidity, to be honest, e.g. loading explosives into a ship whilst under heavy artillery bombardment) everyone had a good time. (Though the GM now expects most of what he prepared to go to waste due to contrary characters who get the party arrested after barely a minute of an espionage plot, or similar, forcing him to employee his contingency plots...)

My favourites...

I've got a few. Topping the list would be:

Exalted
Transhuman Space (with ether GURPS or Alternity rules)
Unknown Armies
Paranoia
Kult

And while it's not my favourite to play, I still get a kick out of:

kill puppies for satan!

AD&D all the way baby - 1st ed & 2nd ed. 3rd ed/3.5 ed suck the big one.

Down with Wizards of the Coast! TSR forever!

..and if you like Samurai, there's always Oriental Adventures :)

Whatever, man. thac0 is Wacko.

Trinity, Aberrant, and Adventure (White Wolf's non-magic line)

Psionics! Whoo hoo!

Whatever, man. thac0 is Wacko.

Pah. THAC0 is a bit too new fangled and 2nd edition for my liking, but the inevitable riposte has to be:

"...and the current HP system isn't?"

In one of the middle-earth systems we tried, my wizard character disovered that an 'Air Wall' spell was a particularly useful method of disabling opposing ships in a dynamic Naval combat situation.Which reminds me, now that my memories are revived, that a good GM also lets your character wave their arms about 'meaningfully' and chant even when you've run out of magical charge, so that the quicker-learning captains of enemy boats take evasive action again to avoid crunching into the (this time non-existent) invisible barriers and spoil their attack run on our slower vessel for no reason. The fact that the enemy ships crunched into each other on at least one occasion because of this was a nice bonus and merely a product of the dice... Almost certainly... :)

(Never try to overplay a trick, though, in this guy's games. I never did quite trust the GM not to engineer the next failed attempt into a succesfull static Wall inadvertantly in front of our own vessel or amongst our rigging while going full-tilt...)

I've only really tried a few GURPS one (Discworld mainly).

D&D really annoys me. No idea why though.

One thing me and my friends do in CoC since there is no chance of survival is to try to piss off the game master or at least have some fun before we die. right now me and a friend are trying wacky cop hijinks/ cliches. He is a half Asian cop who knows kung fu. I am an Irish detective with a drinking problem who lost his last partner the day before he was going to retire.

A couple of friends and I meet up nearly every week to play RPGs, we are hardcore fans. I think it was about 4 or 5 years ago when we realised that our imaginations and talent could easily come up with games similar, and we began making our own RPGs. It hit like a craze, now we meet up every week to play and we take turns to design worlds and places beyond our dreams. I encourage any hardcore RPG player to get a couple of friends and design your own - it's a whole new world of fun.

Tales of Symphonia. BEST. COUNSEL. RPG. EVER.

One thing me and my friends do in CoC since there is no chance of survival is to try to piss off the game master or at least have some fun before we die. right now me and a friend are trying wacky cop hijinks/ cliches. He is a half Asian cop who knows kung fu. I am an Irish detective with a drinking problem who lost his last partner the day before he was going to retire.

:D

That reminds me of my two all time fave CoC characters Tex the spoiled brat son of a rich oilman from Beaumont, and Red, the Scottish geography proffessor. They were always played as a team, caused a great deal of havoc (mostly unrelated to the task at hand) and brought so much amusement to the group that the GM actually requested that I recycle them for special occassions in other campaigns.

That same GM came up with one of the best home brew games I ever played - a cross between Chaosium's BRP rules and AH's Wooden Ships and Iron Men, liberally spiced with a great deal of library research, which was affectionately known as "complsively accurate pirates".

That reminds me of my two all time fave CoC characters Tex the spoiled brat son of a rich oilman from Beaumont, and Red, the Scottish geography proffessor.

You have reminded me of a sad anecdote which reflects how much the players I was refereeing for back in the 80s had missed the point of CoC - I introduced a clearly insane NPC to help fill out the party, called Clwyd Triffid, who had delved into arcane knowledge and been driven insane: the character was basically a total psychopath who when he wasn't trying to carry out information gathering with his sawn-off shotgun was just quietly amusing himself by torturing small animals with the hatchet he carried in his coat. My players considered this to be completely normal behaviour...

I always enjoyed Cyberpunk's combat system and the setting was pretty fun too.

It's been a decade since I've played any sort of PnP rpg though so I dont have a clue whats out there now.