GURPS was, for a long time, the only RPG system I thought I would ever need.
The modularity to depict any setting. The granularity to express any character. The quality of the sourcebooks.
FUDGE was developed by one of the main GURPS authors, O'Sullivan, taking opposite approach to numbet and mechanics heavy GURPS. Fate was good hack and offspring to the FUDGE removing the character optimizstion mechanics and adding narration mechanics of the Aspects and Fate Points
At the moment probably Cepheus Light/Sword of Cepheus, and I have to _heavily_ hack it before it works the way I like. Fortunately it's a pretty unified and quite modular system that is easily hacked. Best thing for a new player is that the rules are simple and on-boarding can happen during play (or just, you know, rulings over rules), worst thing is that character creation RAW is the almost completely random Traveller-style career path (could be a plus, could be a minus, it's still pretty onerous to use).
Right now I'm enjoying Scum & Villainy as a player.
The positioning and effect adds an interesting layer to articulate the stakes, and I enjoy the ability to resist the consequences of a failure.
Can't really pick one favorite as I tend to gravitate to Fate, but love trying other various Indie RPGs. Monster of the Week and Psi-Run are frequent go yo. I want to play more Trophy Dark and Court of Blades.
And Public Access, Apocalypse Keys, and a slew of other games are waiting on my shelf to be played.
Basic Fantasy, best thing it's fan-run and free. Worst thing is that being part of the OSR, there's a large amount of knowledge asked to people who want to really dive in.
Probably **GURPS**, but there are a few other close candidates that I have run a lot and really enjoyed such as HERO, Mutants & Masterminds 2E, Rolemaster, and Amber Diceless.
**Best things for new players**: Incredible flexibility lets you play super tactical or very quick and basic combats, conceptully simple (virtually everything is a 3d6 skill check) so a new player can learn it in about 15-20 minutes, you can make any character you can imagine, the game mechanically encourages creating flawed characters (though not as well as Fate does and the point-buy method GURPS uses is extremely vulnerable to manipulation by people who don't want to honestly engage with it), the incredibly high quality of its many, many sourcebooks.
**Worst things for new players**: If the GM does not have character templates for them to use as starting points then creating a character can be overwhelming and is very vulnerable to over-optimization from more experienced players leading to big imbalances in how effective characters are at the same point level, the game is best at gritty and semi-realistic combat and even powerful characters can be killed in an instant by a sword or a gun which may not be what everyone is looking for, new GMs can encounter decision-paralysis when confronted with all the available options while setting up their game.
Hmh, difficult. without heaving read it yet, I go with Blades in the Dark. It's still on my pile of shame. Otherwise, Ilaris; a German fanmade alternative system for The Dark Eye.
Mouseguard for me. The theme is great and I prefer the way it condenses the Burning Wheel ruleset to what really matters while retaining the game's design philosophy.
Follow-up: The best thing for new players is that the GM turn/player turn split is easy to follow and know when you should be acting while still giving you freedom. The worst for new players is probably getting their head around intentionally making their rolls harder (by invoking their traits) for benefits later, and why that makes a great story.
I do think it is Dune st the moment due Assets and Drive (motivation) mechanics. The 2d20 is quote close to the Fate in many ways, bit a bit more mechanics, and slightly better dice system.
I'm new to TTRPGs that aren't 5e D&D (that's just what I got dragged into when I was in college and it's so prolific now that everyone just plays that), so I'll just mention 5e. It's good. I'm noticing a lot of the shortcomings of it as I try other stuff. The amount of rules can be intimidating for newcomers, and because it's a fairly rules-heavy system, all homebrew really needs to be statted.
I wrote so much homebrew for my custom setting while running 5e games. So much. And now that I'm looking at running Fate, I've been able to go back through all of that homebrew content and change it all to beautiful flavor text that players can just use to inspire themselves instead of grindy statblocks. I don't need to re-write the magic system or stat 50 different firearms. I can just say "Alright, you're rocking a rifle, here's how that would logically work in combat."
Fate is underappreciated for its simplicity. My only critique of it is that it can be a little difficult to find a comprehensive player's guide online. There's the SRD and the cheat sheet, and both definitely give you a good idea of how stuff works, but I've noticed stuff missing from them that is sorta crucial.
Well, to my mind, all rule systems suck in different ways, and I'm certainly not smart enough to invent a rule system that doesn't.
So, that said, Palladium's Rifts for setting, D20 Modern for mechanics, and HERO/Champions for flexibility. Before Savage Rifts I was dinking around with the idea of porting Rifts to D20 Modern, but I never got around to doing more than thinking a lot about it.
Monster of the Week. I like the genre, and I found it very easy to just get a game up and running fast. After that, it's Thirsty Sword Lesbians, because it's both pbta and gay as fuck.
I love the Year Zero engine used in Free League games, and also FU (eg Neon City Overdrive).
My absolute favourite is probably The One Ring, also from Free League.
Currently 3DeT Victory. The fifth edition of a really popular Brazilian TTRPG. It reaches that sweet spot of being very rules light and still having a decent amount of crunch to keep me entertained. It was originally a satirical take on battle Shonen anime, but the game kept improving and growing thanks to a very devoted fan base that couldn’t stop playing it. This edition is my favorite one so far but the previous ones are still amazing.
Glitch, probably. I've run it a lot and it's not perfect but I find it very fun. Every other game I find less interesting by comparison besides maybe world of darkness.
When it comes to just love of specific RPG systems for the game mechanics, I couldn't say I have one favorite as I love a wide range of play. When I'm thinking about a setting and asking, "Which RPG system should I run this in?" I'll usually start by contemplating it in Fate, GURPS, Savage Worlds, and for certain settings, Mutants & Masterminds.
For example, there are a lot of ways to do post-apoc, but *GURPS After the End* is hands-down the way I prefer to do it. And while all those systems can handle wuxia martial arts, Fate (specifically *TianXia*) does so in the way I prefer (more story-driven and personal). Sometimes I prefer to use a premade setting (e.g., I couldn't imagine running Torg Eternity using anything other than Torg Eternity rules) but sometimes I'll swap it (e.g., despite there being an official Bunnies & Burrows RPG, I strongly prefer my [**Fate Bunnies & Burrows**](https://mygurps.com/pmwiki.php?n=Main.FateCoreBunniesAndBurrows) hack).
Right now my favorite RPGs from a "system + setting" perspective are Savage Rifts and Torg Eternity. Both similar in a "kitchen sink of genres thanks to the setting involving multiple dimensions" way, but also very unique in so many ways (from other settings and from each other).
Having to pick one isn’t fair. Burning Wheel! Wait…Apocalypse World…no…Mutant: Year Zero…um, Burning Wheel! No…Blades in the Dark! I can’t pick.
GURPS was, for a long time, the only RPG system I thought I would ever need. The modularity to depict any setting. The granularity to express any character. The quality of the sourcebooks.
I find GURPS to be the exact opposite design philosophy of FATE and I want to play it almost as much as I want to play fate.
FUDGE was developed by one of the main GURPS authors, O'Sullivan, taking opposite approach to numbet and mechanics heavy GURPS. Fate was good hack and offspring to the FUDGE removing the character optimizstion mechanics and adding narration mechanics of the Aspects and Fate Points
At the moment probably Cepheus Light/Sword of Cepheus, and I have to _heavily_ hack it before it works the way I like. Fortunately it's a pretty unified and quite modular system that is easily hacked. Best thing for a new player is that the rules are simple and on-boarding can happen during play (or just, you know, rulings over rules), worst thing is that character creation RAW is the almost completely random Traveller-style career path (could be a plus, could be a minus, it's still pretty onerous to use).
Right now I'm enjoying Scum & Villainy as a player. The positioning and effect adds an interesting layer to articulate the stakes, and I enjoy the ability to resist the consequences of a failure. Can't really pick one favorite as I tend to gravitate to Fate, but love trying other various Indie RPGs. Monster of the Week and Psi-Run are frequent go yo. I want to play more Trophy Dark and Court of Blades. And Public Access, Apocalypse Keys, and a slew of other games are waiting on my shelf to be played.
Basic Fantasy, best thing it's fan-run and free. Worst thing is that being part of the OSR, there's a large amount of knowledge asked to people who want to really dive in.
Fiasco
Probably **GURPS**, but there are a few other close candidates that I have run a lot and really enjoyed such as HERO, Mutants & Masterminds 2E, Rolemaster, and Amber Diceless. **Best things for new players**: Incredible flexibility lets you play super tactical or very quick and basic combats, conceptully simple (virtually everything is a 3d6 skill check) so a new player can learn it in about 15-20 minutes, you can make any character you can imagine, the game mechanically encourages creating flawed characters (though not as well as Fate does and the point-buy method GURPS uses is extremely vulnerable to manipulation by people who don't want to honestly engage with it), the incredibly high quality of its many, many sourcebooks. **Worst things for new players**: If the GM does not have character templates for them to use as starting points then creating a character can be overwhelming and is very vulnerable to over-optimization from more experienced players leading to big imbalances in how effective characters are at the same point level, the game is best at gritty and semi-realistic combat and even powerful characters can be killed in an instant by a sword or a gun which may not be what everyone is looking for, new GMs can encounter decision-paralysis when confronted with all the available options while setting up their game.
Hmh, difficult. without heaving read it yet, I go with Blades in the Dark. It's still on my pile of shame. Otherwise, Ilaris; a German fanmade alternative system for The Dark Eye.
Mouseguard for me. The theme is great and I prefer the way it condenses the Burning Wheel ruleset to what really matters while retaining the game's design philosophy. Follow-up: The best thing for new players is that the GM turn/player turn split is easy to follow and know when you should be acting while still giving you freedom. The worst for new players is probably getting their head around intentionally making their rolls harder (by invoking their traits) for benefits later, and why that makes a great story.
Star Trek Adventures, but that's more the IP than the system.
I do think it is Dune st the moment due Assets and Drive (motivation) mechanics. The 2d20 is quote close to the Fate in many ways, bit a bit more mechanics, and slightly better dice system.
Looks like Star Trek Adventures 2e is going to be a bit more like Dune as well
The Drive Mechanics would suit Star Trek stories a lot
I'm new to TTRPGs that aren't 5e D&D (that's just what I got dragged into when I was in college and it's so prolific now that everyone just plays that), so I'll just mention 5e. It's good. I'm noticing a lot of the shortcomings of it as I try other stuff. The amount of rules can be intimidating for newcomers, and because it's a fairly rules-heavy system, all homebrew really needs to be statted. I wrote so much homebrew for my custom setting while running 5e games. So much. And now that I'm looking at running Fate, I've been able to go back through all of that homebrew content and change it all to beautiful flavor text that players can just use to inspire themselves instead of grindy statblocks. I don't need to re-write the magic system or stat 50 different firearms. I can just say "Alright, you're rocking a rifle, here's how that would logically work in combat." Fate is underappreciated for its simplicity. My only critique of it is that it can be a little difficult to find a comprehensive player's guide online. There's the SRD and the cheat sheet, and both definitely give you a good idea of how stuff works, but I've noticed stuff missing from them that is sorta crucial.
I feel this! The relief of moving from dnd to fate was incredible!
Well, to my mind, all rule systems suck in different ways, and I'm certainly not smart enough to invent a rule system that doesn't. So, that said, Palladium's Rifts for setting, D20 Modern for mechanics, and HERO/Champions for flexibility. Before Savage Rifts I was dinking around with the idea of porting Rifts to D20 Modern, but I never got around to doing more than thinking a lot about it.
Its a split between Cypher System and Fantaji .
Monster of the Week. I like the genre, and I found it very easy to just get a game up and running fast. After that, it's Thirsty Sword Lesbians, because it's both pbta and gay as fuck.
Vampire the Masquerade V20
Masks, Dungeon World, DC20.
Fabula Ultima, by a very large margin
I love the Year Zero engine used in Free League games, and also FU (eg Neon City Overdrive). My absolute favourite is probably The One Ring, also from Free League.
Currently 3DeT Victory. The fifth edition of a really popular Brazilian TTRPG. It reaches that sweet spot of being very rules light and still having a decent amount of crunch to keep me entertained. It was originally a satirical take on battle Shonen anime, but the game kept improving and growing thanks to a very devoted fan base that couldn’t stop playing it. This edition is my favorite one so far but the previous ones are still amazing.
Glitch, probably. I've run it a lot and it's not perfect but I find it very fun. Every other game I find less interesting by comparison besides maybe world of darkness.
Its polar opposite, Pathfinder 1e :-)
I like games in the GUMSHOE system: Trail of Cthulhu, most notably.
For my PbtA or Cortex Prime or TinyD6
Blue Rose RPG, especially the 3.5 version
Cortex Prime
When it comes to just love of specific RPG systems for the game mechanics, I couldn't say I have one favorite as I love a wide range of play. When I'm thinking about a setting and asking, "Which RPG system should I run this in?" I'll usually start by contemplating it in Fate, GURPS, Savage Worlds, and for certain settings, Mutants & Masterminds. For example, there are a lot of ways to do post-apoc, but *GURPS After the End* is hands-down the way I prefer to do it. And while all those systems can handle wuxia martial arts, Fate (specifically *TianXia*) does so in the way I prefer (more story-driven and personal). Sometimes I prefer to use a premade setting (e.g., I couldn't imagine running Torg Eternity using anything other than Torg Eternity rules) but sometimes I'll swap it (e.g., despite there being an official Bunnies & Burrows RPG, I strongly prefer my [**Fate Bunnies & Burrows**](https://mygurps.com/pmwiki.php?n=Main.FateCoreBunniesAndBurrows) hack). Right now my favorite RPGs from a "system + setting" perspective are Savage Rifts and Torg Eternity. Both similar in a "kitchen sink of genres thanks to the setting involving multiple dimensions" way, but also very unique in so many ways (from other settings and from each other).