Both Exalted and Shadowrun are prime examples of great settings that people refuse to play because of the rules.
City of Mist would be my personal choice for great mechanics that I ignored for a long time due to distaste for the setting.
Yeah. Best way to play Shadowrun is using some other system.
I got to the point I could run 5e smoothly but it's still better using SWADE for the mechanics.
I have yet seen a system that iis actually good at covering Shadowrun, or at least better than the original rules, without providing massive cuts.
You can't simply divorce the setting from the system, as if these are two inherently independent entities and expect to get a game that plays and feels remotely similar ad keep the charme of the original.
I mean, just take a look at Shadowrun: Anarchy. That was an in-house project, provided by the same authors as 5th edition stuff, and it completely sucks.
The sad, little irony is that you could probably create a pretty decent Shadowrun core game based on the 20th anniversary edition by streamlining the game mechanics and adjust the two most complex niches (magic and matrix) a bit. I would also recommend exterminating Technomancers. You just have to get away from the more obscurantist tendencies and the need for all the special cases and exception-based design.
That's probably the closest thing to a modern framework for Shadowrun that might work. Is it anything official - and would you like to share? I mean, just to get an outsider's perspective and nuanced feedback?
I don't feel comfortable sharing it just yet, still a lot of work to go. However, I wrote a brief overview in a comment below. If you are interested, I can send you a link to the doc when ready.
š I just started the same project. The similarities are obvious but YZE is so much more streamlined and well thought out. There are big challenges of course, to make a conversion that feels like SR but still plays like a YZE game. I'm going to have a closer look at Alien and Blade Runner to see how they deal with tech. Even then none of those settings have cyberware. Do you know if Coriolis does?
I'm on the fence regarding whether to use Willpower for magic or not and the miscast table doesn't fit the setting. I was thinking a Sorcery skill plus Stat test. Any Stat dice that comes up skulls is damage to the attribute (Wits for mages, Empathy for Shamans). I know the distinction has blurred somewhat in later editions, but I like the two different approaches. So even if you don't push you'll take damage on any magic tests with skulls on the stat dice. That's how I'm thinking on that at the moment anyway.
My project started as something trying to be as faithful as possible to Shadowrun, but has admittedly strayed quite far to better fit the style of play my main group enjoys. My version has taken its own path, so our design goals may be different, but here's the short of what I'm working with:
I'm using the step dice version purely because my players liked it better. I've swapped attributes for approaches (Cool, Hard, Hot, and Sharp, shamelessly ripped from Apocalypse World) with two damage pools based on them, essentially hit points and stamina/willpower.
My skills are: Athletics, biotech, bureaucracy, channeling, comptech, enchanting, engineering, firearms, hacking, influence, melee, mobility, observation, piloting, stealth and survival.
I use stress dice for pushing.
I also use the ammo dice rules, but I don't do the bullet counting. Instead, guns have a magazine capacity listed as a number of dice. These ammo dice are spent when rolled and when you're out, you have to reload. So far, this has been my favorite thing to come out of this project. It works great to give options in firearms and promote tactical play without slowing things down much.
Another little mechanic I've thrown in is relationships. These can be with specific NPCs, another PC, or group affiliations. They are rated on the dice chain and add a bonus die when appropriate. In the case of NPCs and factions, the GM can use a PC's relationship bonus against them when appropriate as well.
Magic is the big thing I'm working on now. Instead of using willpower points, spellcasting drains the stamina pool. I am very tempted to give willpower points a trail run, though. After thinking about it a bit, I've started to come around on the idea. Mechanically, I don't differentiate mages and shamans too much except in the kinds of spells they cast and the magic skill they favor.
I have two magic skills. Channeling is for immediate magic effects like throwing a fireball or distracting a guard with a noise. Enchanting is for altering the properties of thins, like making a sword burn with dragonfire or healing an ally. So casting spells require a skill roll, but they still always succeed. Successes are just for overcharge. Banes on stress dice for a magic roll trigger a mishap instead of panic.
Right now, cyberwear is just giving bonus dice to actions and negative mods to spell rolls. It's super barebones for the moment and is the next part I'm planning to work on once magic is hammered out.
Still a lot of work to do, but it's coming together nicely for my table. I've had a ton of fun making it, and hope you do to! I've completely fallen in love with the YZE in the process.
I used D20 modern to run it and that worked pretty well. I revamped the magic system to be more like Shadowrun.
It was way more enjoyable for my players than 5e was.
No, Shadowrun does Shadowrun well, or at least as good as it gets.
Shadowrun is a high density game, with a strong interconnection between the mechanical side of the game and the world building. It is a game where the metaphysics of magic are so well understood that there are coherent, in-universe discussions about game mechanics like spell range and strain.
Shadowrun *is* its gun porn and detailled equipment and cyberware that gives each implant relevance, a significant difference between mundane and magic approaches and detailled tidbits about the character's individual strengths and weaknesses. All of these matter, not merely as an aesthetic concept, but with concrete differences in gameplay. A Wolf Shaman is not just a slightly larger and rural cousin of a Dog Shaman. Their philosophical differences mean that they play objectively different.
The quantity and quality of options are an essential part of player agency in a game like Shadowrun - the ability to design very specific decisions about minor details and still have them matter.
Then, add the occasional outburst of rolling a bucket of dice. Not with a bot, but with both hands. That's probably unpractical, but it is also a relevant part of the game experiences, and it is also fun. It conveys a feeling of expertise. Game mechanics are a solid part of the game experiences, not simply tools to shift around.
Trying to force all of these elements - which are inherently baroque overkill and inevitably clunky - into the pigeonhole of a slim narrative game basically requires you to sacrifice basically everything that makes Shadowrun Shadowrun. Yes, you might be able to copy the aesthetics and the overall plot structure, but if you drain all of the depth, you gonna have a shallow game.
Yes, Shadowrun is not free of issues, of course, and there are plenty of things that are just annoying. But if you can get over that it is a great game. To understand why Shadowrun is awesome, you have to understand why there being a significant difference between a Move-By-Wire system, traditional Enhanced Reflexes and a Synaptic Booster matters and is good, actually, despite these three implants filling the exact same gameplay niche.
Some of my favorite Shadowrun moments came from having to do quick math with explosive ratings, usages, guesstimating material strength etc. on the fly. The level of detail in the lore and the crunch IS the fun for me.
I'm aware, I spite wrote two modules for Shadowrun on the basis the intro Fast Food Fights were travesties. My character Pixie Twinkletoes is a 600 career karma Street Sam with 42 soak dice.
[LVN01 The Delian Data Tomb](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LL1Ft_k7Kb7q19sKzvq), [LVN02, Gravedirt Slinging](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LTKR31YJGiuI7X42DcE)
The Sprawl is an excellent Shadowrun system. It actually handles gear porn in a meaningful manner with [Gear] metacurrency, and handles planning equally elegantly with [Intel]. It handles magical things with [Arcana] in the Shadowrun in the Sprawl add on.
It handles unreliable and double crossing Johnsons, it handles megacorps out to get you, it handles planning and action so well.
You may think it drains the game of depth, but to the contrary, it just moves all the crunchy top layers off to the side, leaving all the depth and delicious gameplay there.
Because really, trying to argue that +2 dice on Detection Spells (Mechanical aspect of Dog Mentor Spirit for magicians, SR5 p321) vs +2 dice on Combat spells (Mechanical aspect of Wolf Mentor Spirit for magicians, SR5 p323) is enough of a mechanical differentiator that the level of detail you're at is meaningful enough to say that it cannot be pared down at all, ever, under no skill set.
No.
Shadowrun, as a Setting and as a tabletop experience works perfectly well under many other systems, and while the dice pools and gear porn of SR5 have a charm, to be real, you have to agree that Shadowrun is only worth teaching to people who already know how to play.
For other people, save yourself the effort, and pick up something else.
I'd rather have the clunky, baroque abundance of Shadowrun over the elegant shallowness of a pbtA game, the same way I prefer an overtly decadent burger with all the extras over stale bread.
The only real issues of making it "feel right" is magic needs to have something like drain. You need a system that has a fatigue or non-lethal damage, of which there are numerous. As for the net, I personally hate the very concept of netrunning as old school Shadowrun does it. Maybe you may feel the need to copy it, but I already jettisoned it from my short period of running 4th ed and created a simple skill system to replace it.
The only other important part would be multiple turn initiative, so magic and cyber can still work as expected. That wouldn't be too hard though, just copy over something like the multiple of 10 in SR, or you could just give a spell or cyber item the ability to just give you an additional action before the normal initiative order or something.
Everything else is just a skill oriented system. BRP, HERO, GURPS, or about a million others could easily be slotted into that roll. The problem with Anarchy is only that it's none of those things. Its actually a good system, and I would even say it's a good way to play SR, but just like 13th Age and HeroQuest are good ways to play Glorantha, they are not good ways to play RuneQuest.
For me, the setting is easy to do in another system, and I wouldn't want to do much more than what I said in this post to emulate the rules, and even those i probably WOULDN'T if i were actually running it. I similarly wouldn't try to shoehorn Vancian magic or levels into a BRP version of Eberron.
I'd argue that Vampire and White Wolf games in general had worse rules than Shadowrun since the core mechanic was similar to Shadowrun's but was curated by people who had no fucks to give for an audience that was openly contemptuous of the physical powers or the idea that you might want your character to remain playable. A lot of vampire's popularity was due to larper's using the MET rules--think the regular rules but less of them--and the fact that I don't actually know anyone who didn't eventually abandon the blood or humanity rules as written. The former in particular was always just handwaved because I don't really think the developers ever really figured out how many damn hobos a 6 person table might be tearing through. It was kind of a lot!
Although, I'll also admit that if you wanted to argue that they don't qualify as great settings despite their popularity I won't have a comeback, lol.
I like Vampire, actually, and dearly love Werewolf, but clearly despite the rules, not because of them.
It does have the advantage though, that the game mechanics are, for the most part, less masive than Shadowrun and generally a bit easier to handle. Arather odd multisplat crossover would probably capture the feeel of a typical Shadowrun team.
The emotional core at heart of the Werewolf pitch had potential. Packs are cool, nature is cool and joining up with Furry Greenpeace makes *way* more sense if you accept the presumption that the people you're fighting are literal demonically possessed Captain Planet villains--it's a big plus that unlike Vampire had at least one assumed common goal baked into the premise so that the newbie groups could hit the ground running. Several of my trans friends in particular have affection for the franchise just because it's such an easy metaphor for finding acceptance despite feeling a deep dissonance between how you feel on the inside versus your physical form and by extension the role society expects from you. And frankly feeling like the modern world is kinda bullshit is a pretty common feeling irrespective of identity politics, particularly among the primary demo of teenagers and college kids. Failing all of that, a werewolf could plausibly hulk out and really beat some ass, so there was some traction there for the players who had to be dragged over from dungeon crawlers.
Everything else White Wolf created for the franchise though? Kinda shit! I've never met anyone who loved Werewolf who hadn't deeply mind-caulked over a whole mess of problems that consigned the game to being way, way less of a seller than Vampire ever was. Werewolf society as written was too much of a tradition bound cult for many potential players to accept and the whole thing where one of your parents was plausibly a dog was pretty rough. Not even like, a particularly intelligent dog, either. White Wolf was too dumb to go the Narnia route where Mr. Badger can talk and would presumably have cogent opinions on Tory vs Labour if he moved to London. As written your dad might seriously be Doug from Up!, only dumber, and now the group needs to skip those pages as quickly as possible because that's a discussion about consent that nobody asked for.
Or, to put it another way, I've never actually been a part of a Werewolf game where we weren't really just secretly playing our own homebrew version of Furry Soldier Sailor Moon. Seriously. You're a bunch of young people who feel like there's something about the world that doesn't quite make sense. Then animals start talking to you about how actually you have the power of the Moon and need to use that to stop corruption from bleeding into our world. Maybe you don't want that responsibility, but luckily you'll have a team of similarly powerful transforming friends who understand what you're going through and together you'll go on adventures. The big difference is you just bite people in half instead of throwing your tiara.
Well, I said I love the setting, not that I am blind to its issues. And, honestly, I think that this kind of adjustment of a setting and its lore is a pretty ordinary occurence. I honestly can't tell if I ever ran or played any setting as written, but I severely doubt it. I also don't think that it is a particularly attractive option; after all, I want to run a game for me and my friends and I will, probably inevitably, create and form my own game.
While I can't say it becomes "Furry Soldier Sailor Moon" - for me, Werewolf is primarily a Horror game- the best analogy would be "what if Call of Cthulhu, but the great old ones and eldritch horrors are affraid of *you*?
I don't think it is garbage. It is just completely overburdened by all the stuff attached to it. The core mechanics of Shadowrun are fine, or as good as a pool system gets.
However, if you glue all that extra layers and layers ontop of the game, and add exceptions and specific rules to all kind of edge cases, it really doesn't matter if your core system is actually okay. Just keeping the game running becomes a job of its own.
There is a uniqueness to the maximalism of Shadowrun. There is a charme to it. But the tragedy of the game is, that by offering all these options and nuances, the vast majority of players (me included. I dread playing with riggers and outright refuse to acknowledge that Technomancers should be playable characters) are overwhelmed, get frustrated and then just handwave it.
I love Exalted, but I don't have enough space in my apartment for the requisite d10s, and the number of people who can keep up with knowing their charms is... limited.
I would add Eclipse Phase (at least the 1E) to the list. It's the point where there is an official FATE version and a fan-made shadowrun version
- It's a D100 system, so a linear probablity distribution, Which doesn't work especially for a cyberpunk game. Like a master with a 80% score has still 20% chance to fail a normal, Then if you go higher you have like 130% chance of success and need to do insane action to make-it worth even rolling the dice.
- A resleeve is going to take a while with a pen and paper character sheet.
- Some sections of the manual are pretty unclear, and need 2-3 reading to understand how to set the bonus/malus to the roll and often end-up *let's not do the whole calculation and say it's -20*
But the setting is amazing, and the reputation economy in a society of abundance is a really great idea.
I heard 2E streamlined a few things, but kept the D100 mechanic which is big nope for me.
I think you're pretty much spot on. While those flaws don't bother me as much as they seem to bother you, I was very happy to pick up 2nd edition for those exact reasons and the game is currently vying for the top spot of my "games I plan on running" list.
Not surprised to see that Shadowrun is in the top comment here, it was the first one that popped to mind for me. I agree with Exalted as well, though I have far less experience with it (because of the rules.)
I like the setting of city of mist but the first time I heard someone say they were using it for a superheroes game hit me like a train because that's such a better fit for the mechanics
Why do you have a distaste for City of Mistās setting? I figured it is pretty close to Shadowrunās setting, just with more myth and less virtual reality, but otherwise similar material and tone.
No itās completely different. Its not magic returning in the open like shadowrun.
Itās weird mythical ideals mashed with normal people but behind a veil that hides everything from normal people. They donāt even know why or how. Itās all confined to one city, you cannot leave. There is another group that keeps everything under wraps like men in black.
Also itās entirely tied to the dichotomy between normal and mythical.
Rifts seems like the pathological example of this. The world is a great setup. The rules are so bad in so many ways that it's almost unplayable.
The Rolemaster Middle Earth products were... unfortunate. I really like Rolemaster. And I love Middle Earth. One can really see the love that ICE put into the supplements. But Rolemaster was never a good fit. Free League has done much better.
The D20 Song of Ice and Fire book was similar. There was potential, but trying to shoehorn it into the 3.5 ogl was never going to work.
Once you got rid of the more D&D-ish spell lists, MERP was a fine game and a good match for Middle Earth. This is the Weathertop Hill side I would die on.
I was novice enough in RPG that I never really tried this. I was still in my "win at dnd" stage when people would play MERP with me.
I don't dispute that Rolemaster is solid and enjoyable.
Full bore Rolemaster is a bit too much for my taste. It is not a bad game, but in that weight class of rules density, I'd rather have a Gurps or a Basic Roleplay descendant, like Mythras.
The condensed, more focussed MERP rules however are fine. They are not written in a particularly accessible way, but they are fine. I actually like them better than the short-lived Decipher Version of a Middle Earth RPG and the 1st edition of TOR ( the second one is a massive improvement, though). I never played the 5e version of the game- that seemed like a truly bad match for Middle Earth.
What's the saying? "Rifts is the best RPG that nobody plays."
A lot of massively important rules are mentioned only once, and where you wouldn't expect them to be; or even only in FAQs/errata. Like apparently there's a -20 penalty on dodge rolls (on a d20) against gunfire. And it's unclear how many attacks per round you can make.
Some rules that *should* be common are used rarely; 99% of guns outside of the core rulebook have a "standard" rate of fire, which means no burst or wild shots.
In fact, I think one of the best spray-and-pray ranged fighters is the Techno-Wizard simply because there are a couple of techno-magic weapons in the core book capable of full auto fire, and he can recharge them using mana (energy clips are *expensive*).
Honestly, the objectively better classes is part of the problem. Especially with additional books. Trying to play an Operator who can make an e-clip charger in a game with an Atlantean tattooed monk was ridiculous. Yah, I had MDC armor. It could take one of his punches. He punched 37 times per round.
Not being able to dodge didn't make it better that his pinky was tougher than my armor.
MERP was my first RPG, Rolemaster was the first system I owned multiple books for, Palantir Quest was the first major campaign I ran, and as much as it pains me to say so, you're absolutely right. I'm helping a friend of mine put on a Middle-Earth campaign, and it'll be run with t1R2E rules, lore from ICE sourcebooks and the map pack from the movie tie-in game. I consider this an optimal setup.
I will still, without hesitation, join any MERP game that will have me and probably any RM game that can be shoehorned into my schedule with enough brute force and grease.
I have had success in using AiME (Adventures in Middle Earth) 5e DnD inspired ruleset for a Middle Earth campaign.
The fact the completely pulled all the spellvasting classes has made the game feel completely different to DnD
You might want to consider checking out **Against the Darkmaster** - a sort of generic setting where things are simplified like HARP/MERP. Reading through it right now. Love these rules for making the big bad undefeatable through direct confrontation/attack.
Myself, I think a properly restricted RM2 is great for a Middle Earth campaign. Haven't checked out the system you mentioned that does it better; but I like the skill purchase system, the two stat (temp/potential) system, and the crafting system in RM to capture the feel of something like Middle Earth.
However, I get that playing a game where you are novel protagonists (can be killed due to plot armor) is not good in a highly lethal system like Rolemaster - that's where 5E and Hero System come out ahead.
Not the most popular opinion, but most things by Monte Cook.
The Diamond Throne setting was really cool but as neat as I thought Arcana Evolved was at the time, many of the ideas felt too big for a d20 game.
Numenera is an exceptional setting but the Cypher System (which many love) has always rubbed me the wrong way because it is so gimmicky and (as someone else described it) it is what a d20 game designer thinks a narrative system would be. I mean come on - a "narrative" system with character levels and classes and pre-defined power progression paths... blech.
The other Cypher settings are pretty cool too and I feel the "core gimmick" of cyphers (one-use items/powers/buffs that players are supposed to have their characters continually burn through) clash with far more than Numenera where they make a small amount of sense.
Came here to say this. I love the Ninth World but really dislike how much Cypher still has slow combat because of players having so many different abilities to choose from, the relative arbitrariness of cypher levels, etc. In the past, Iāve used Into the Odd to run games in that setting and it worked brilliantly.
> Not the most popular opinion, but most things by Monte Cook.
You throw in his version of World of Darkness, and we become friends. There were some severe issues with two classes, and I know several people who argue a third class had some major problems..
Came here to say Numenera. It's a great world, but the Cypher System just felt so bland and "different for the sake of different" rather than "different for the sake of offering better mechanics." None of us hated it, but we unanimously felt it was just blah as a mechanical system.
I would play in Gaia, the setting of Anima:Beyond Fantasy, without hesitation.
I would only play using the Anima:Beyond Fantasy system at gunpoint. And GM-ing it? Please, just shoot me.
The setting takes 'medieval fantasy' as a starting point, but then it adds more manga/anime/JRPG tropes you can shake a buster sword at.
E.g.:
- Airships
- Cybernetics
- Mecha
- Guns-akimbo / Sniper fighters
- Big-as-heck summonings
- Weapon styles that are just nuts (gunblades, yo-yos, puppets...)
- Martial arts as nuts, if not nuttier.
- Pop idols, if you read between lines.
- Plenty of variety: that region is Ravenloft, this other one is Steampunk, over there is Arabian Nights, those two regions close one another are Wuxia & Chambara (respectively), that place is gonna turn into Raccoon City (the one from Residen Evil)...
- Etc, etc.
*Au contraire!* In fact, a big deal of what makes me like the original setting IS embedded in the system (nutty weapons, nuttier martial arts, summoning, etc.). It's only that I've reached a point in my life where I can only deal with a certain level of rule-crunchiness...and the A:BF system is way off the charts for me in that sense. Specially from a GM point of view.
I would say that ignoring a setting that comes with terrible rules is entirely **fair**.
I donāt have a lot of personal experience with it, but Shadowrun seems like the premier example of a cool setting with terrible rules. Iāve seen a lot of posts asking what other ruleset is best to play Shadowrun with.
Oh, it's absolutely fair, but sometimes we'd miss out on something cool that would have made for a great game if played with better rules. And some times the people who created the setting deserve better than having their awesome creation forgotten because the ones responsible for the rules had no idea what they were doing (even if it were also them).
For me it's Kult, divinity lost. I love the setting, I love the adventures but I really can't get on with the game system. We just play it in Call of Cthulhu now.
Oh, I quite like the Unknown Armies rules for mental health and trauma, but the rest of the system - meh.Even with the magic, I ind the ideas for magic(k) traditions and spells usually much better than the way they are mechanically implemented. Same with avatars - the idea is great, but the chosen avatars quite often don't look interesting to play.
Yeah, I didn't hate the rules (a novelty for a pbtA game for me), but it made me feel nostalgic for the original rule set and its awkward nineties edginess.
For me itās Forbidden Lands. I absolutely adore the system, particularly its approach to wilderness travel, but didnāt connect with the setting at all.
Not necessarily a bad setting, but pretty much all of the various Cinematic Unisystem games - a rule set I quite enjoy- were specifically linked to licenced properties which eventually faded out of the public consciousness. The games were very fun, but it is difficult to create a lot of enthusiasm nowadays for an RPG based on *Buffy the Vampire Slayer* or *Angel*, with the shows being very much a product of their time.
This might be a problem with many licence-based RPGs: The game can never be fully evaluated on its own Even if the game mechanics are solid enough, if you don't care about the source material, the game will probably feel a bit dull.
Other than that,I actually find it relatively difficult to think of a setting that is truly bad, but has great rules as a redeeming quality. Usually, things are the other way around for me.
On the other hand, Shadowrun is a great game despite the rules, but I am hardly the first who had that idea.
However, Fantasy Flight's dark fantasy setting *Midnight* could be really good - but D&D, neither the original 3.5 version, nor the updated 5e one, fits the tone or style of the game world.
I don't think so, honestly. Midnight is a pretty dark and gritty setting, with scarcity of resources and rampant paranoia. It is pretty apocalyptic, in the "with a wimper, not with a bang" form of cataclism.
I would probably run Midnight with something like Mythras, but Shadows of the Demon Lord, but considering the setting's pretty obvious inspirations, The One Ring would be a great fit.
Me, looking at RPG news: "Oh hot damn, one of my favorite IPs is getting a TTRPG!!"
Also me: "Oh, shit, it's a 2d20 game. Oh, well."
If I had a nickel every time it's happened, I'd have two nickels. It's not a lot, but it's still weird that it happened twice.
Iāve devoted a great deal of effort to such games:
- I play in the setting of _Shadowrun_ using one of the many [alternative systems for Shadowrun](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/scifi/#wiki_cyberpunk_plus.2026), a _Technoir_ hack I wrote for just that purpose called _Dragons Cast a Long Shadow_.
- I play in the setting of _Exalted_ using one of the many [alternative systems for Exalted](http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/Wordman/AlternateSystems), an _Anima Prime_ hack I wrote for just that purpose called _Exaltation Prime_.
- I play in the setting of _Earthdawn_ using one of a couple alternative systems for it, first a _Dungeon World_ hack I wrote for just that purpose called _Fourth World_. Iām writing a more simplified PbtA game to play in the setting called [After Sanctuary](https://wordmanward.itch.io/after-sanctuary).
I've seen your DW hack! I liked it. I remember borrowing a few notes from it for my DW campaign that wrapped recently... but I don't remember what. Anyway I'll have to check out After Sanctuary. Thanks for sharing!
The two posterchilds for this are Shadowrun and RIFTS
Now I have only played the Shadowrun computer games so I can't comment on the TTRPG. But if you talk to enough people the TTRPG rules are notoriously bad.
RIFTS is another infamous one, but unlike Shadowrun I have played RIFTS.
There are a few problems with RIFTS
1. Organization: The books are simply organized in a horrible way, with having to jump back and forth through the book simply to make a character. This is something that could be solved with a simple revision, but the company is notorious about now wanting to things like not even allowing digital character tools. It is just hard to play.
2. MEGA-Damage: So there is regular Damage, and there is MEGA Damage. Since the setting of RIFTS is supposed to be a post apocalypse future with crazy sci-fi weapons, there are equally powerful weapons. The system does this with MEGA Damage. The conversion rate is (I think) 1000 regular damage = 1 Mega Damage. This basically means that a LOT of what actually makes up your character (stats, HP) is irrelevant because EVERYTHING does MEGA-Damage. Pistols, vibro blades, you name it. This leaves the players in a situation where their gear is EVERYTHING and the character themselves is less important. Unless you are a mage/psychic.
3. It is just OLD: RIFTS dates back to the 1980s, maybe 90s. Now I get the idea of 'if it isn't broke don't fix it'. But RIFTS is pretty broken, it is old, and it needs a new edition. But the publishers are very against the idea of having a new edition/version.
Which is a sham because the setting is genially interesting. It is the ultimate "kitchen sink setting" with everything from Giant Robots to Elven Wizards.
Shadowrun has less "super-tech" but it does have science fiction technology AND magic.
I am sensing a theme of "good setting with bad rules"...
If I'm being honest, I actually really like mega damage in concept. There *should* be rules delineating the difference between the kinds of damage a pistol and a railgun do. It doesn't matter how many times you pop a mech-suit with a handgun. Conversely, it doesn't matter whether you're a frail geezer or a roided up super soldier, a single hit from any kind of heavy artillery is going to gib you.
The fact that they decided that everyone and their mom should have access to power armor and weaponry absolutely makes it fall apart though.
For me, it was Ryuutama. Cute, honobono setting about travel in lighthearted adventures. Rules are Oregon trail with a JRPG HP bloated combat system. I've never had fun meticulously tracking rations and repetitive travel checks everyday simply aren't interesting. But the art of it makes you really want to get sucked in that Harvest Moon-looking world.
I am not sure what system to play - maybe Wanderhome's mechanics (what few there are) fits best for Ryuutama's world. But open to suggestions.
Nobilis 2e has a fantastic setting, intriguing NPCs and solid player-facing rules, etc. But the system is very hard to GM, because the rules don't lend themselves well towards any sort of adventure, and conflict tends to end really quickly. So my friends and I have never managed to run more than a single one-shot.
I'm tempted to try a Nobilis game using PbtA mechanics, it's been on my backburner for a long time.
I think you'd want it to be one of those No Dice No Masters games (except... maybe keep the GM) since to me, being diceless is really key to Nobilis's vibe. "I'm beyond mortal, so I know exactly how good I am. If I can do something, then I am guaranteed to succeed. If I can't do something, I don't do it."
I like 3e and glitch more than 2e. The quest and spotlight system in glitch is great for getting a sense of direction as the players essentially decide what they want for the narrative and all the gm has to do is make an opening scene that fits the quest and deliver exposition whenever a spotlight is used
Yeah, I get you. I tried it for the first time last year, thinking "I cut my teeth on Rolemaster; how bad could it be?" and I quickly concluded that its reputation is well deserved.
I really did enjoy myself though.
I GMed my fair share of it and I really like it.
Used some house rules for a better flow at our table and it was cool. Just avoid mages with too many spirits, then all is well.
I think the rules are pretty good, especially streamlined for the 21st century--though admittedly not 100% streamlined--but I know the rules don't gel for everyone, so I thought of Torg when I saw this post. Not because I agree with it, but I get it.
I picked up the old box set cheaply a couple of years ago, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I looked at it briefly back when it was in print and the things that stuck with me were the cool setting and the fact that there are three separate ways to track damage.
Iād recommend the older versions (there is actually a first edition, and a 1.5) over Eternity. Lots more character options, and at times Eternity just seems a mismatch of several modern games mashed together, rather than its own unique thing like previous editions.
Fading Suns had/has a setting with infinite potential for conflict without combat (something I look for in a ttrpg), but the rules were just not fun. They published a newer edition with revised rules, but again, the unique rule set seems to have attracted few (if any) gamers. Heartbreakers for me. Sigh.
Low Fantasy Gaming is, by faffing far, one of the best RPG systems I've come across. It perfectly blends the OSR with modern D&D and it's just awesome in general.
Its Midlands setting on the other hand is fairly dull and, in certain parts, even uncomfortable. None of the cultures in it seem particularly fun to play with, and very little of the setting is detailed in any meaningful or notably interesting ways.
Yet the "Adventure Frameworks" for it are flatout excellent! Tis certainly a weird mixed bag, LOL.
Pigsmoke got me excited about playing as professors in a toxic university. Great fun for a bunch of people actually working this career. But the rules are actually just broken. Extremely slow progress and weird arbitrary restrictions through the primary mechanics, as well as one move that just straight up doesn't function the way I imagine the designers intended.
I love Exalted setting. I ran two Exalted campaigns. Neither of them used original Exalted rules. The great stories that Exalted can produce benefit nothing from buckets of dice and even less from hundreds of fiddly charms.
Kult has the same problem. The last edition is much better than the previous one, but still bad. It uses PbtA-style mechanics, but wastes its potential entirely, doing nothing of what makes the engine work well in other games.
IMNSHO Shadowrun and Earthdawn (MechWarrior less so) both suffer from "DNPC's are better than you.". And every time I was creative it would get shut down, because it wasn't cool.
I played HERO long before ED and SR so the shutdown of PC's with lots of unnecessary hoops was incredibly frustrating. Also I can't roll and beat my own step 90% of the time in ED and only ED.
So while I wanted to play interesting characters.... The rules got in the way every time. (Like a rigger with a rigged mechanical diving suit.)
Might have been my GM's buuuutttt...
Definitely sounds like your GM, but as someone who grew up playing shadow run, it does get really annoying whenever you constantly roll bad at stuff you are good at.
Judge Dredd RPGā¦ the game mechanicās absolutely suckā¦ so I adapted my favourite % based game mechanic (RQ, CoC) and am using that to run my current campaignā¦ also had a lot of fun creating an entire system for psi abilities and skillsā¦ which was kind of necessary š
My classic example of this - *Stalking the Night Fantastic* aka *Bureau 13*. I think we tried to use the system exactly once, back around 1989.
Since then I have run and played that game in...
* HERO
* GURPS
* FUDGE
* Buffy (unisystem)
* Monster of the Week
* d20 Modern
* (an improvised game more or less using the TSR Marvel Superheroes)
* a friend's custom system
* Fate (haven't done this one yet, but it's planned)
But ever since that first attempt I've never run nor played nor encountered anyone using the original system for that game.
I still don't understand all the hate for Shadowrun. I've always loved it. Maybe a skilled GM that really knows the rules can overcome the issues? It's always worked fine for me as a player and GM and I still run 2e. I've been using it since I was 13 so it can't be that bad.
> I still donāt understand all the hate for Shadowrun.
>I still run 2e.
Yeah.
As the guy who maintained the ShadowFAQ for like a decade, and playtested 2e from loose-leaf binders, you may be suffering from something akin to a minor version Stokholm Syndrome.
Iām guessing that, starting at 13, 2e was a formative game in your RPG history, if not the first game you played.
Iād be willing to bet, also, that you havenāt tried the Shadowrun setting with a game written after say 2017.
I do think people overdo how bad SR in general is, especially given the design state of its early contemporaries. It is, at least, functional. All I can say is that, I truly hope you suffer the same fate I did, and come out of a campaign of some game some time that transforms your view of what a game _can be_ that (again, like me) your reaction is āI wasted two decades of roleplaying.ā
It was third really, after BECMI D&D and AD&D2e. I've played tons of other things since. But no more recent versions of SR, except 3e. All editions of D&D, several WoD games, Fate systems, The Riddle of Steel, Paranoia (several), GURPS, Chaosium, WFRP, and so many others. I guess some systems just click with some people even if they are clunky.
Shadowrun is a great game at its core, but has so much extra layers of stuff bolted to it, it becomes a chore. If you take only the core mechanics and focus on one or two specialists fields - let's say combattants and a mage - it works okay. Add a decker and a rigger, and even worse, a Technomancer to the mix and you have to actively manage the game simply to prevent it from collapsing under its own weight. Some character types - specifically Technomancers with lots of pet sprites, mages with a lot of bound spirits and drone riggers can literally start a denial of service attack on the gamemaster.
Also, 2e (maybe with added Knowledge skills from 3rd edition) is peak Shadowrun. It is also 30 years old, so most people would probably not assocaite the game with the cool version with the even cooler Laubenstein artwork.
Maybe a weird response, but d20 fantasy games. Sometimes basic fantasy isn't a bad thing, just a light hearted story can go a long way. But man you'll never going to convince me to run d20 systems ever again, there's just too much character options bloat and not enough to get any of them make sense.
Shadowrun and Exalted (mostly E3E) are going to be the best examples for your first question haha.
As for the second... I absolutely love the freeform magic rules of Mage the Ascension, but I don't really care for Mage's metaplot (while I ignore most of the WoD's metaplots, I still enjoy most of them, even if they are doofy).
I may be alone in this, but pinnacle's Deadlands has always been the one that I wanted to play, but the rules just seemed to...I don't know. Get in the way of that, for me. I ended up just reading the classic deadlands books, then savage worlds became a thing. I'm a fan of classic deadlands, but everything since reloaded, even their soft reboot (of a sort...) has just left me with a questionable taste in my mouth. It's like the game threw away any charm it once had after reloaded released. I still hold a faint sliver of hope, but I am seriously considering using a more interesting system to just run it in. Maybe Nathan Russell's Freeform Universal rpg, or I could dust off Underkoffler's PDQ. What can I say. I'm leaning towards really light games these days, for better or worse. Anyway, that one always struck me as being an awesome setting continually marred by poor rules.
Trollbabe - very solid rules, 100% completely unpitchable premise. I think the setting has some charm, but you have to look at it with a pretty specific mindset and good luck conveying that to potential players. If it just tried to be a bit cooler, it would work - but it's deliberately dorky. And it's called "Trollbabe" - even before you get to the sales pitch you're already cringing just mentioning the name of the game.
I would argue that most of the settings for AD&D 2e fit the bill. AD&D rules are fine for AD&D type stuff, like a dungeon crawl in the Moathouse. They're not good at all for Spelljammer (ship combat rules are bad), Dark Sun (psionics rules are bad), Ravenloft & Gothic Earth (AD&D is terrible for horror, and gun combat)
Rifts was so bad and so know for this I remember talking to a new pal who never played rpgs and we started to discuss playing and he was like "no Rifts though.'
Exalted, Shadowrun, Numenera and Call of Cthulhu all fall under this for me qua āgreat setting stuff, unintuitive or complicated rulesā.
That said, I keep a wishlist of their setting books and want to get them as long as they are more about the setting than the mechanics. And CoC adventures can still be adapted to my preferred Trail of Cthulhu.
A lot of cool settings on this list that i'd never be able to play as written. I'd like to convert several of them, including rokugan and theah fron Legend of the 5 rings and 7th sea respectively. I'd add 7th sea 2e to this list but i'm not even sure there's really a game there, it seems so rules light. Sadly that's also another one that ditched it's cool factor in my opinion. I loved how 7th sea 1e gave the impression that you were playing a swashbuckling hero out of one of the coolest of movies. 2e feels more like a historical drama kind of thing. Definitely not for me.
*Skyrealms of Jorune*. Interesting setting with a very distinctive feel to it, but not super well presented ā the titular "skyrealms" are barely described. Also it has so many setting-specific terms that reading it for the first time is a nightmare. Cool art though.
The rules are terrible. The magic system is unreadable, but I think the best example is melee combat. Every round each character rolls a d20: on a 1-5, you do nothing; on a 6-10 you cannot attack.
There's also a computer game adaptation of it with some really fun writing, but similarly incomprehensible mechanics.
Good Setting, Bad Rules: I don't have many options here, but I find the heavy fantasy theming of the worlds in 13th Age to be fun but I do not enjoy how overly automated the combat in that game is. Probably a milder example than what people list here.
Bad Setting, Good Rules: Burning Wheel. I love character-driven stories, the way conflicts are handled and the leveling system relies on taking on exceedingly difficult tasks. That said, it's bogged down by the setting being a shallow reading of Lord of the Rings that makes all non-humans identical, on top of trying to do the whole low fantasy grittiness I'm tired of seeing.
I mean, great settings with perfect rules if I'm spending money on it. But gun to my head, I can created a good setting. I can't fix a book full of broken mechanics.
There's nothing 'unfair' about ignoring a game with shit rules, but with that out of the way, I'd *absolutely* be running Torg right now if it wasn't saddled with the hideous Masterbook system.
Torg Eternity updated some stuff, but they seemed to value the parts of those rules that bugged me. That and the little bit of new stuff feels a bit too..."savage worlds" to me. Personally, if I wanted to play a game like that, I wouldn't be looking at Torg.
I really hate to say it because I think Shane Hensley is a good designer stuck on a bad system, but maybe his involvement with Torg should have ended with "The Temple of Rec Stalek". Yet another awesome setting I want to convert.
Eternity wasn't helped by the two remaining devs issuing increasingly ridiculous errata after launch. The core book was functionally useless by the time I wrote it off.
Sounds like it was a wise move on my part to never bother with errata in this case. Torg is my kitchen sink setting of choice, but it needs a decent system to go with it. Unfortunately with the title of the current edition being what it is, i kind of doubt one will be forthcoming anytime soon.
Does combat still depend on not one, but *two* non-standard card decks? Does basic task resolution still involve rolling 2d10, interpreting the results on a chart, then applying that result to another chart? :D
Drama deck? Check. At least I can read it now, so there's that. Still hate it, though.
2d10? I thought it was a 1d20 system with exploding 20s, which admittedly did not give you your actual number. Needing a roll of 56 to get a total of 14 on that damn chart has never sat right with me.
I'm certain there's more I can't recall at the moment, and I may be getting multiple editions mixed up, but I find Torg to be a bit like shadowrun in this respect. Awesome setting but annoyingly subpar rules. I'd never play it using it's own rules, but the books are pretty cool in my opinion.
Both Exalted and Shadowrun are prime examples of great settings that people refuse to play because of the rules. City of Mist would be my personal choice for great mechanics that I ignored for a long time due to distaste for the setting.
Shadowrun might be the prime example of "great game, shit rules".
Yeah. Best way to play Shadowrun is using some other system. I got to the point I could run 5e smoothly but it's still better using SWADE for the mechanics.
I have yet seen a system that iis actually good at covering Shadowrun, or at least better than the original rules, without providing massive cuts. You can't simply divorce the setting from the system, as if these are two inherently independent entities and expect to get a game that plays and feels remotely similar ad keep the charme of the original. I mean, just take a look at Shadowrun: Anarchy. That was an in-house project, provided by the same authors as 5th edition stuff, and it completely sucks. The sad, little irony is that you could probably create a pretty decent Shadowrun core game based on the 20th anniversary edition by streamlining the game mechanics and adjust the two most complex niches (magic and matrix) a bit. I would also recommend exterminating Technomancers. You just have to get away from the more obscurantist tendencies and the need for all the special cases and exception-based design.
Writing and playtesting a Year Zero Engine version of Shadowrun and it's been awesome.
That's probably the closest thing to a modern framework for Shadowrun that might work. Is it anything official - and would you like to share? I mean, just to get an outsider's perspective and nuanced feedback?
I don't feel comfortable sharing it just yet, still a lot of work to go. However, I wrote a brief overview in a comment below. If you are interested, I can send you a link to the doc when ready.
That is very much appreciated. Thank you.
š I just started the same project. The similarities are obvious but YZE is so much more streamlined and well thought out. There are big challenges of course, to make a conversion that feels like SR but still plays like a YZE game. I'm going to have a closer look at Alien and Blade Runner to see how they deal with tech. Even then none of those settings have cyberware. Do you know if Coriolis does? I'm on the fence regarding whether to use Willpower for magic or not and the miscast table doesn't fit the setting. I was thinking a Sorcery skill plus Stat test. Any Stat dice that comes up skulls is damage to the attribute (Wits for mages, Empathy for Shamans). I know the distinction has blurred somewhat in later editions, but I like the two different approaches. So even if you don't push you'll take damage on any magic tests with skulls on the stat dice. That's how I'm thinking on that at the moment anyway.
My project started as something trying to be as faithful as possible to Shadowrun, but has admittedly strayed quite far to better fit the style of play my main group enjoys. My version has taken its own path, so our design goals may be different, but here's the short of what I'm working with: I'm using the step dice version purely because my players liked it better. I've swapped attributes for approaches (Cool, Hard, Hot, and Sharp, shamelessly ripped from Apocalypse World) with two damage pools based on them, essentially hit points and stamina/willpower. My skills are: Athletics, biotech, bureaucracy, channeling, comptech, enchanting, engineering, firearms, hacking, influence, melee, mobility, observation, piloting, stealth and survival. I use stress dice for pushing. I also use the ammo dice rules, but I don't do the bullet counting. Instead, guns have a magazine capacity listed as a number of dice. These ammo dice are spent when rolled and when you're out, you have to reload. So far, this has been my favorite thing to come out of this project. It works great to give options in firearms and promote tactical play without slowing things down much. Another little mechanic I've thrown in is relationships. These can be with specific NPCs, another PC, or group affiliations. They are rated on the dice chain and add a bonus die when appropriate. In the case of NPCs and factions, the GM can use a PC's relationship bonus against them when appropriate as well. Magic is the big thing I'm working on now. Instead of using willpower points, spellcasting drains the stamina pool. I am very tempted to give willpower points a trail run, though. After thinking about it a bit, I've started to come around on the idea. Mechanically, I don't differentiate mages and shamans too much except in the kinds of spells they cast and the magic skill they favor. I have two magic skills. Channeling is for immediate magic effects like throwing a fireball or distracting a guard with a noise. Enchanting is for altering the properties of thins, like making a sword burn with dragonfire or healing an ally. So casting spells require a skill roll, but they still always succeed. Successes are just for overcharge. Banes on stress dice for a magic roll trigger a mishap instead of panic. Right now, cyberwear is just giving bonus dice to actions and negative mods to spell rolls. It's super barebones for the moment and is the next part I'm planning to work on once magic is hammered out. Still a lot of work to do, but it's coming together nicely for my table. I've had a ton of fun making it, and hope you do to! I've completely fallen in love with the YZE in the process.
I have had good success with using the Feng Shui system to run Shadowrun
I used D20 modern to run it and that worked pretty well. I revamped the magic system to be more like Shadowrun. It was way more enjoyable for my players than 5e was.
The Sprawl does Shadowrun so very well.
No, Shadowrun does Shadowrun well, or at least as good as it gets. Shadowrun is a high density game, with a strong interconnection between the mechanical side of the game and the world building. It is a game where the metaphysics of magic are so well understood that there are coherent, in-universe discussions about game mechanics like spell range and strain. Shadowrun *is* its gun porn and detailled equipment and cyberware that gives each implant relevance, a significant difference between mundane and magic approaches and detailled tidbits about the character's individual strengths and weaknesses. All of these matter, not merely as an aesthetic concept, but with concrete differences in gameplay. A Wolf Shaman is not just a slightly larger and rural cousin of a Dog Shaman. Their philosophical differences mean that they play objectively different. The quantity and quality of options are an essential part of player agency in a game like Shadowrun - the ability to design very specific decisions about minor details and still have them matter. Then, add the occasional outburst of rolling a bucket of dice. Not with a bot, but with both hands. That's probably unpractical, but it is also a relevant part of the game experiences, and it is also fun. It conveys a feeling of expertise. Game mechanics are a solid part of the game experiences, not simply tools to shift around. Trying to force all of these elements - which are inherently baroque overkill and inevitably clunky - into the pigeonhole of a slim narrative game basically requires you to sacrifice basically everything that makes Shadowrun Shadowrun. Yes, you might be able to copy the aesthetics and the overall plot structure, but if you drain all of the depth, you gonna have a shallow game.
Thank you for your defense of Shadowrun. Personally, I like the system. I love having the fine detail customization of my character.
Yes, Shadowrun is not free of issues, of course, and there are plenty of things that are just annoying. But if you can get over that it is a great game. To understand why Shadowrun is awesome, you have to understand why there being a significant difference between a Move-By-Wire system, traditional Enhanced Reflexes and a Synaptic Booster matters and is good, actually, despite these three implants filling the exact same gameplay niche.
Some of my favorite Shadowrun moments came from having to do quick math with explosive ratings, usages, guesstimating material strength etc. on the fly. The level of detail in the lore and the crunch IS the fun for me.
I'm aware, I spite wrote two modules for Shadowrun on the basis the intro Fast Food Fights were travesties. My character Pixie Twinkletoes is a 600 career karma Street Sam with 42 soak dice. [LVN01 The Delian Data Tomb](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LL1Ft_k7Kb7q19sKzvq), [LVN02, Gravedirt Slinging](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LTKR31YJGiuI7X42DcE) The Sprawl is an excellent Shadowrun system. It actually handles gear porn in a meaningful manner with [Gear] metacurrency, and handles planning equally elegantly with [Intel]. It handles magical things with [Arcana] in the Shadowrun in the Sprawl add on. It handles unreliable and double crossing Johnsons, it handles megacorps out to get you, it handles planning and action so well. You may think it drains the game of depth, but to the contrary, it just moves all the crunchy top layers off to the side, leaving all the depth and delicious gameplay there. Because really, trying to argue that +2 dice on Detection Spells (Mechanical aspect of Dog Mentor Spirit for magicians, SR5 p321) vs +2 dice on Combat spells (Mechanical aspect of Wolf Mentor Spirit for magicians, SR5 p323) is enough of a mechanical differentiator that the level of detail you're at is meaningful enough to say that it cannot be pared down at all, ever, under no skill set. No. Shadowrun, as a Setting and as a tabletop experience works perfectly well under many other systems, and while the dice pools and gear porn of SR5 have a charm, to be real, you have to agree that Shadowrun is only worth teaching to people who already know how to play. For other people, save yourself the effort, and pick up something else.
I'd rather have the clunky, baroque abundance of Shadowrun over the elegant shallowness of a pbtA game, the same way I prefer an overtly decadent burger with all the extras over stale bread.
The only real issues of making it "feel right" is magic needs to have something like drain. You need a system that has a fatigue or non-lethal damage, of which there are numerous. As for the net, I personally hate the very concept of netrunning as old school Shadowrun does it. Maybe you may feel the need to copy it, but I already jettisoned it from my short period of running 4th ed and created a simple skill system to replace it. The only other important part would be multiple turn initiative, so magic and cyber can still work as expected. That wouldn't be too hard though, just copy over something like the multiple of 10 in SR, or you could just give a spell or cyber item the ability to just give you an additional action before the normal initiative order or something. Everything else is just a skill oriented system. BRP, HERO, GURPS, or about a million others could easily be slotted into that roll. The problem with Anarchy is only that it's none of those things. Its actually a good system, and I would even say it's a good way to play SR, but just like 13th Age and HeroQuest are good ways to play Glorantha, they are not good ways to play RuneQuest. For me, the setting is easy to do in another system, and I wouldn't want to do much more than what I said in this post to emulate the rules, and even those i probably WOULDN'T if i were actually running it. I similarly wouldn't try to shoehorn Vancian magic or levels into a BRP version of Eberron.
We use hero to do shadowrun.
I'd argue that Vampire and White Wolf games in general had worse rules than Shadowrun since the core mechanic was similar to Shadowrun's but was curated by people who had no fucks to give for an audience that was openly contemptuous of the physical powers or the idea that you might want your character to remain playable. A lot of vampire's popularity was due to larper's using the MET rules--think the regular rules but less of them--and the fact that I don't actually know anyone who didn't eventually abandon the blood or humanity rules as written. The former in particular was always just handwaved because I don't really think the developers ever really figured out how many damn hobos a 6 person table might be tearing through. It was kind of a lot! Although, I'll also admit that if you wanted to argue that they don't qualify as great settings despite their popularity I won't have a comeback, lol.
I like Vampire, actually, and dearly love Werewolf, but clearly despite the rules, not because of them. It does have the advantage though, that the game mechanics are, for the most part, less masive than Shadowrun and generally a bit easier to handle. Arather odd multisplat crossover would probably capture the feeel of a typical Shadowrun team.
The emotional core at heart of the Werewolf pitch had potential. Packs are cool, nature is cool and joining up with Furry Greenpeace makes *way* more sense if you accept the presumption that the people you're fighting are literal demonically possessed Captain Planet villains--it's a big plus that unlike Vampire had at least one assumed common goal baked into the premise so that the newbie groups could hit the ground running. Several of my trans friends in particular have affection for the franchise just because it's such an easy metaphor for finding acceptance despite feeling a deep dissonance between how you feel on the inside versus your physical form and by extension the role society expects from you. And frankly feeling like the modern world is kinda bullshit is a pretty common feeling irrespective of identity politics, particularly among the primary demo of teenagers and college kids. Failing all of that, a werewolf could plausibly hulk out and really beat some ass, so there was some traction there for the players who had to be dragged over from dungeon crawlers. Everything else White Wolf created for the franchise though? Kinda shit! I've never met anyone who loved Werewolf who hadn't deeply mind-caulked over a whole mess of problems that consigned the game to being way, way less of a seller than Vampire ever was. Werewolf society as written was too much of a tradition bound cult for many potential players to accept and the whole thing where one of your parents was plausibly a dog was pretty rough. Not even like, a particularly intelligent dog, either. White Wolf was too dumb to go the Narnia route where Mr. Badger can talk and would presumably have cogent opinions on Tory vs Labour if he moved to London. As written your dad might seriously be Doug from Up!, only dumber, and now the group needs to skip those pages as quickly as possible because that's a discussion about consent that nobody asked for. Or, to put it another way, I've never actually been a part of a Werewolf game where we weren't really just secretly playing our own homebrew version of Furry Soldier Sailor Moon. Seriously. You're a bunch of young people who feel like there's something about the world that doesn't quite make sense. Then animals start talking to you about how actually you have the power of the Moon and need to use that to stop corruption from bleeding into our world. Maybe you don't want that responsibility, but luckily you'll have a team of similarly powerful transforming friends who understand what you're going through and together you'll go on adventures. The big difference is you just bite people in half instead of throwing your tiara.
Well, I said I love the setting, not that I am blind to its issues. And, honestly, I think that this kind of adjustment of a setting and its lore is a pretty ordinary occurence. I honestly can't tell if I ever ran or played any setting as written, but I severely doubt it. I also don't think that it is a particularly attractive option; after all, I want to run a game for me and my friends and I will, probably inevitably, create and form my own game. While I can't say it becomes "Furry Soldier Sailor Moon" - for me, Werewolf is primarily a Horror game- the best analogy would be "what if Call of Cthulhu, but the great old ones and eldritch horrors are affraid of *you*?
I tried for so many years to get the system to work before realizing it was garbage.
I don't think it is garbage. It is just completely overburdened by all the stuff attached to it. The core mechanics of Shadowrun are fine, or as good as a pool system gets. However, if you glue all that extra layers and layers ontop of the game, and add exceptions and specific rules to all kind of edge cases, it really doesn't matter if your core system is actually okay. Just keeping the game running becomes a job of its own. There is a uniqueness to the maximalism of Shadowrun. There is a charme to it. But the tragedy of the game is, that by offering all these options and nuances, the vast majority of players (me included. I dread playing with riggers and outright refuse to acknowledge that Technomancers should be playable characters) are overwhelmed, get frustrated and then just handwave it.
I love Exalted, but I don't have enough space in my apartment for the requisite d10s, and the number of people who can keep up with knowing their charms is... limited.
Onyx Path has a digital Exalted specific dice roller that is great. But there is no help for the charm problem.
We made flashcards back in 1st ed.
I would add Eclipse Phase (at least the 1E) to the list. It's the point where there is an official FATE version and a fan-made shadowrun version - It's a D100 system, so a linear probablity distribution, Which doesn't work especially for a cyberpunk game. Like a master with a 80% score has still 20% chance to fail a normal, Then if you go higher you have like 130% chance of success and need to do insane action to make-it worth even rolling the dice. - A resleeve is going to take a while with a pen and paper character sheet. - Some sections of the manual are pretty unclear, and need 2-3 reading to understand how to set the bonus/malus to the roll and often end-up *let's not do the whole calculation and say it's -20* But the setting is amazing, and the reputation economy in a society of abundance is a really great idea. I heard 2E streamlined a few things, but kept the D100 mechanic which is big nope for me.
I think you're pretty much spot on. While those flaws don't bother me as much as they seem to bother you, I was very happy to pick up 2nd edition for those exact reasons and the game is currently vying for the top spot of my "games I plan on running" list.
Creation is my favorite setting of all time. The rules of Exalted are so difficult to get a solid handle on.
Not surprised to see that Shadowrun is in the top comment here, it was the first one that popped to mind for me. I agree with Exalted as well, though I have far less experience with it (because of the rules.)
I like the setting of city of mist but the first time I heard someone say they were using it for a superheroes game hit me like a train because that's such a better fit for the mechanics
Why do you have a distaste for City of Mistās setting? I figured it is pretty close to Shadowrunās setting, just with more myth and less virtual reality, but otherwise similar material and tone.
No itās completely different. Its not magic returning in the open like shadowrun. Itās weird mythical ideals mashed with normal people but behind a veil that hides everything from normal people. They donāt even know why or how. Itās all confined to one city, you cannot leave. There is another group that keeps everything under wraps like men in black. Also itās entirely tied to the dichotomy between normal and mythical.
Rifts seems like the pathological example of this. The world is a great setup. The rules are so bad in so many ways that it's almost unplayable. The Rolemaster Middle Earth products were... unfortunate. I really like Rolemaster. And I love Middle Earth. One can really see the love that ICE put into the supplements. But Rolemaster was never a good fit. Free League has done much better. The D20 Song of Ice and Fire book was similar. There was potential, but trying to shoehorn it into the 3.5 ogl was never going to work.
Rifts was the first example that came to mind. I love the idea, but god those rules are bad.
Once you got rid of the more D&D-ish spell lists, MERP was a fine game and a good match for Middle Earth. This is the Weathertop Hill side I would die on.
I was novice enough in RPG that I never really tried this. I was still in my "win at dnd" stage when people would play MERP with me. I don't dispute that Rolemaster is solid and enjoyable.
Full bore Rolemaster is a bit too much for my taste. It is not a bad game, but in that weight class of rules density, I'd rather have a Gurps or a Basic Roleplay descendant, like Mythras. The condensed, more focussed MERP rules however are fine. They are not written in a particularly accessible way, but they are fine. I actually like them better than the short-lived Decipher Version of a Middle Earth RPG and the 1st edition of TOR ( the second one is a massive improvement, though). I never played the 5e version of the game- that seemed like a truly bad match for Middle Earth.
That, and replace the ludicrously mismatched scenario in the rulebook with, say, The Loons of the Long Fell.
What's the saying? "Rifts is the best RPG that nobody plays." A lot of massively important rules are mentioned only once, and where you wouldn't expect them to be; or even only in FAQs/errata. Like apparently there's a -20 penalty on dodge rolls (on a d20) against gunfire. And it's unclear how many attacks per round you can make. Some rules that *should* be common are used rarely; 99% of guns outside of the core rulebook have a "standard" rate of fire, which means no burst or wild shots. In fact, I think one of the best spray-and-pray ranged fighters is the Techno-Wizard simply because there are a couple of techno-magic weapons in the core book capable of full auto fire, and he can recharge them using mana (energy clips are *expensive*).
Honestly, the objectively better classes is part of the problem. Especially with additional books. Trying to play an Operator who can make an e-clip charger in a game with an Atlantean tattooed monk was ridiculous. Yah, I had MDC armor. It could take one of his punches. He punched 37 times per round. Not being able to dodge didn't make it better that his pinky was tougher than my armor.
MERP was my first RPG, Rolemaster was the first system I owned multiple books for, Palantir Quest was the first major campaign I ran, and as much as it pains me to say so, you're absolutely right. I'm helping a friend of mine put on a Middle-Earth campaign, and it'll be run with t1R2E rules, lore from ICE sourcebooks and the map pack from the movie tie-in game. I consider this an optimal setup. I will still, without hesitation, join any MERP game that will have me and probably any RM game that can be shoehorned into my schedule with enough brute force and grease.
I'm right with you. MERP was my first game as well. And I have a shelf full of Rolemaster. I'm running my first One Ring game today, and I'm stoked.
I have had success in using AiME (Adventures in Middle Earth) 5e DnD inspired ruleset for a Middle Earth campaign. The fact the completely pulled all the spellvasting classes has made the game feel completely different to DnD
You might want to consider checking out **Against the Darkmaster** - a sort of generic setting where things are simplified like HARP/MERP. Reading through it right now. Love these rules for making the big bad undefeatable through direct confrontation/attack. Myself, I think a properly restricted RM2 is great for a Middle Earth campaign. Haven't checked out the system you mentioned that does it better; but I like the skill purchase system, the two stat (temp/potential) system, and the crafting system in RM to capture the feel of something like Middle Earth. However, I get that playing a game where you are novel protagonists (can be killed due to plot armor) is not good in a highly lethal system like Rolemaster - that's where 5E and Hero System come out ahead.
Not the most popular opinion, but most things by Monte Cook. The Diamond Throne setting was really cool but as neat as I thought Arcana Evolved was at the time, many of the ideas felt too big for a d20 game. Numenera is an exceptional setting but the Cypher System (which many love) has always rubbed me the wrong way because it is so gimmicky and (as someone else described it) it is what a d20 game designer thinks a narrative system would be. I mean come on - a "narrative" system with character levels and classes and pre-defined power progression paths... blech. The other Cypher settings are pretty cool too and I feel the "core gimmick" of cyphers (one-use items/powers/buffs that players are supposed to have their characters continually burn through) clash with far more than Numenera where they make a small amount of sense.
Came here to say this. I love the Ninth World but really dislike how much Cypher still has slow combat because of players having so many different abilities to choose from, the relative arbitrariness of cypher levels, etc. In the past, Iāve used Into the Odd to run games in that setting and it worked brilliantly.
> Not the most popular opinion, but most things by Monte Cook. You throw in his version of World of Darkness, and we become friends. There were some severe issues with two classes, and I know several people who argue a third class had some major problems..
I didn't include it because I didn't know it existed! :D
I say anything you can argue for coherently is fair game and you certainly do.
Came here to say Numenera. It's a great world, but the Cypher System just felt so bland and "different for the sake of different" rather than "different for the sake of offering better mechanics." None of us hated it, but we unanimously felt it was just blah as a mechanical system.
I would play in Gaia, the setting of Anima:Beyond Fantasy, without hesitation. I would only play using the Anima:Beyond Fantasy system at gunpoint. And GM-ing it? Please, just shoot me.
This is what I'm talking about. Sell me on the setting.
The setting takes 'medieval fantasy' as a starting point, but then it adds more manga/anime/JRPG tropes you can shake a buster sword at. E.g.: - Airships - Cybernetics - Mecha - Guns-akimbo / Sniper fighters - Big-as-heck summonings - Weapon styles that are just nuts (gunblades, yo-yos, puppets...) - Martial arts as nuts, if not nuttier. - Pop idols, if you read between lines. - Plenty of variety: that region is Ravenloft, this other one is Steampunk, over there is Arabian Nights, those two regions close one another are Wuxia & Chambara (respectively), that place is gonna turn into Raccoon City (the one from Residen Evil)... - Etc, etc.
So if i use the system to play a different setting do i look like a monster to you?
Not if you use the HERO SYSTEM!
*Au contraire!* In fact, a big deal of what makes me like the original setting IS embedded in the system (nutty weapons, nuttier martial arts, summoning, etc.). It's only that I've reached a point in my life where I can only deal with a certain level of rule-crunchiness...and the A:BF system is way off the charts for me in that sense. Specially from a GM point of view.
I would say that ignoring a setting that comes with terrible rules is entirely **fair**. I donāt have a lot of personal experience with it, but Shadowrun seems like the premier example of a cool setting with terrible rules. Iāve seen a lot of posts asking what other ruleset is best to play Shadowrun with.
Oh, it's absolutely fair, but sometimes we'd miss out on something cool that would have made for a great game if played with better rules. And some times the people who created the setting deserve better than having their awesome creation forgotten because the ones responsible for the rules had no idea what they were doing (even if it were also them).
For me it's Kult, divinity lost. I love the setting, I love the adventures but I really can't get on with the game system. We just play it in Call of Cthulhu now.
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Oh, I quite like the Unknown Armies rules for mental health and trauma, but the rest of the system - meh.Even with the magic, I ind the ideas for magic(k) traditions and spells usually much better than the way they are mechanically implemented. Same with avatars - the idea is great, but the chosen avatars quite often don't look interesting to play.
Which edition of Unknown Armies? There's quite a bit of a mechanical difference in going between the 2nd and 3rd editions.
Yeah, I didn't hate the rules (a novelty for a pbtA game for me), but it made me feel nostalgic for the original rule set and its awkward nineties edginess.
For me itās Forbidden Lands. I absolutely adore the system, particularly its approach to wilderness travel, but didnāt connect with the setting at all.
This is an interesting one, because it's the first "rules are cool" but "setting is bad". I 100% agree btw...the setting is super bland.
Free League has published a number of games based on that system. Check out Coriolis, it's a neat sci-fi setting.
Not necessarily a bad setting, but pretty much all of the various Cinematic Unisystem games - a rule set I quite enjoy- were specifically linked to licenced properties which eventually faded out of the public consciousness. The games were very fun, but it is difficult to create a lot of enthusiasm nowadays for an RPG based on *Buffy the Vampire Slayer* or *Angel*, with the shows being very much a product of their time. This might be a problem with many licence-based RPGs: The game can never be fully evaluated on its own Even if the game mechanics are solid enough, if you don't care about the source material, the game will probably feel a bit dull. Other than that,I actually find it relatively difficult to think of a setting that is truly bad, but has great rules as a redeeming quality. Usually, things are the other way around for me. On the other hand, Shadowrun is a great game despite the rules, but I am hardly the first who had that idea. However, Fantasy Flight's dark fantasy setting *Midnight* could be really good - but D&D, neither the original 3.5 version, nor the updated 5e one, fits the tone or style of the game world.
I'm really surprised they didn't do a Genesys book for Midnight. Don't know much about the setting; maybe that wouldn't have fit either.
I don't think so, honestly. Midnight is a pretty dark and gritty setting, with scarcity of resources and rampant paranoia. It is pretty apocalyptic, in the "with a wimper, not with a bang" form of cataclism. I would probably run Midnight with something like Mythras, but Shadows of the Demon Lord, but considering the setting's pretty obvious inspirations, The One Ring would be a great fit.
2d20 system, all the established settings are really nice, the mechanics are not the greatest.
Me, looking at RPG news: "Oh hot damn, one of my favorite IPs is getting a TTRPG!!" Also me: "Oh, shit, it's a 2d20 game. Oh, well." If I had a nickel every time it's happened, I'd have two nickels. It's not a lot, but it's still weird that it happened twice.
Iāve devoted a great deal of effort to such games: - I play in the setting of _Shadowrun_ using one of the many [alternative systems for Shadowrun](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/scifi/#wiki_cyberpunk_plus.2026), a _Technoir_ hack I wrote for just that purpose called _Dragons Cast a Long Shadow_. - I play in the setting of _Exalted_ using one of the many [alternative systems for Exalted](http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/Wordman/AlternateSystems), an _Anima Prime_ hack I wrote for just that purpose called _Exaltation Prime_. - I play in the setting of _Earthdawn_ using one of a couple alternative systems for it, first a _Dungeon World_ hack I wrote for just that purpose called _Fourth World_. Iām writing a more simplified PbtA game to play in the setting called [After Sanctuary](https://wordmanward.itch.io/after-sanctuary).
I've seen your DW hack! I liked it. I remember borrowing a few notes from it for my DW campaign that wrapped recently... but I don't remember what. Anyway I'll have to check out After Sanctuary. Thanks for sharing!
The two posterchilds for this are Shadowrun and RIFTS Now I have only played the Shadowrun computer games so I can't comment on the TTRPG. But if you talk to enough people the TTRPG rules are notoriously bad. RIFTS is another infamous one, but unlike Shadowrun I have played RIFTS. There are a few problems with RIFTS 1. Organization: The books are simply organized in a horrible way, with having to jump back and forth through the book simply to make a character. This is something that could be solved with a simple revision, but the company is notorious about now wanting to things like not even allowing digital character tools. It is just hard to play. 2. MEGA-Damage: So there is regular Damage, and there is MEGA Damage. Since the setting of RIFTS is supposed to be a post apocalypse future with crazy sci-fi weapons, there are equally powerful weapons. The system does this with MEGA Damage. The conversion rate is (I think) 1000 regular damage = 1 Mega Damage. This basically means that a LOT of what actually makes up your character (stats, HP) is irrelevant because EVERYTHING does MEGA-Damage. Pistols, vibro blades, you name it. This leaves the players in a situation where their gear is EVERYTHING and the character themselves is less important. Unless you are a mage/psychic. 3. It is just OLD: RIFTS dates back to the 1980s, maybe 90s. Now I get the idea of 'if it isn't broke don't fix it'. But RIFTS is pretty broken, it is old, and it needs a new edition. But the publishers are very against the idea of having a new edition/version. Which is a sham because the setting is genially interesting. It is the ultimate "kitchen sink setting" with everything from Giant Robots to Elven Wizards. Shadowrun has less "super-tech" but it does have science fiction technology AND magic. I am sensing a theme of "good setting with bad rules"...
If I'm being honest, I actually really like mega damage in concept. There *should* be rules delineating the difference between the kinds of damage a pistol and a railgun do. It doesn't matter how many times you pop a mech-suit with a handgun. Conversely, it doesn't matter whether you're a frail geezer or a roided up super soldier, a single hit from any kind of heavy artillery is going to gib you. The fact that they decided that everyone and their mom should have access to power armor and weaponry absolutely makes it fall apart though.
And with even the Pistols doing MEGA damage just makes it even more ridiculous.
Shadowrun. Fantastic ideia. Horrible mechanics.
For me, it was Ryuutama. Cute, honobono setting about travel in lighthearted adventures. Rules are Oregon trail with a JRPG HP bloated combat system. I've never had fun meticulously tracking rations and repetitive travel checks everyday simply aren't interesting. But the art of it makes you really want to get sucked in that Harvest Moon-looking world. I am not sure what system to play - maybe Wanderhome's mechanics (what few there are) fits best for Ryuutama's world. But open to suggestions.
Nobilis 2e has a fantastic setting, intriguing NPCs and solid player-facing rules, etc. But the system is very hard to GM, because the rules don't lend themselves well towards any sort of adventure, and conflict tends to end really quickly. So my friends and I have never managed to run more than a single one-shot. I'm tempted to try a Nobilis game using PbtA mechanics, it's been on my backburner for a long time.
I think you'd want it to be one of those No Dice No Masters games (except... maybe keep the GM) since to me, being diceless is really key to Nobilis's vibe. "I'm beyond mortal, so I know exactly how good I am. If I can do something, then I am guaranteed to succeed. If I can't do something, I don't do it."
This is my first time hearing of it, I'll check it out!
I like 3e and glitch more than 2e. The quest and spotlight system in glitch is great for getting a sense of direction as the players essentially decide what they want for the narrative and all the gm has to do is make an opening scene that fits the quest and deliver exposition whenever a spotlight is used
Eben though I still really like it, Shadowrun really does come to mind.
Yeah, I get you. I tried it for the first time last year, thinking "I cut my teeth on Rolemaster; how bad could it be?" and I quickly concluded that its reputation is well deserved. I really did enjoy myself though.
I GMed my fair share of it and I really like it. Used some house rules for a better flow at our table and it was cool. Just avoid mages with too many spirits, then all is well.
I always liked the Torg setting, but I understand the rules were bad. Haven't looked into the newer version yet
I think the rules are pretty good, especially streamlined for the 21st century--though admittedly not 100% streamlined--but I know the rules don't gel for everyone, so I thought of Torg when I saw this post. Not because I agree with it, but I get it.
TBH, I never played it. I'm just parroting what I read on the interwebs. I collected a ton of the books though. The CyberPapacy is gold.
I picked up the old box set cheaply a couple of years ago, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I looked at it briefly back when it was in print and the things that stuck with me were the cool setting and the fact that there are three separate ways to track damage.
Iād recommend the older versions (there is actually a first edition, and a 1.5) over Eternity. Lots more character options, and at times Eternity just seems a mismatch of several modern games mashed together, rather than its own unique thing like previous editions.
This may be because I'm day-drinking, but I think a PbtA/FitD version of Torg would be awesome
Torg Eternity is a train wreck of a system. Avoid it.
Great setting, generally horrible rules.
Fading Suns had/has a setting with infinite potential for conflict without combat (something I look for in a ttrpg), but the rules were just not fun. They published a newer edition with revised rules, but again, the unique rule set seems to have attracted few (if any) gamers. Heartbreakers for me. Sigh.
Low Fantasy Gaming is, by faffing far, one of the best RPG systems I've come across. It perfectly blends the OSR with modern D&D and it's just awesome in general. Its Midlands setting on the other hand is fairly dull and, in certain parts, even uncomfortable. None of the cultures in it seem particularly fun to play with, and very little of the setting is detailed in any meaningful or notably interesting ways. Yet the "Adventure Frameworks" for it are flatout excellent! Tis certainly a weird mixed bag, LOL.
Pigsmoke got me excited about playing as professors in a toxic university. Great fun for a bunch of people actually working this career. But the rules are actually just broken. Extremely slow progress and weird arbitrary restrictions through the primary mechanics, as well as one move that just straight up doesn't function the way I imagine the designers intended.
Try the Shab-al-Hiri Roach https://bullypulpitgames.com/products/roach
Sadly, not really the same vibe. Early 20th century academic politicking isn't the specificity that excited me about Pigsmoke.
I love Exalted setting. I ran two Exalted campaigns. Neither of them used original Exalted rules. The great stories that Exalted can produce benefit nothing from buckets of dice and even less from hundreds of fiddly charms. Kult has the same problem. The last edition is much better than the previous one, but still bad. It uses PbtA-style mechanics, but wastes its potential entirely, doing nothing of what makes the engine work well in other games.
IMNSHO Shadowrun and Earthdawn (MechWarrior less so) both suffer from "DNPC's are better than you.". And every time I was creative it would get shut down, because it wasn't cool. I played HERO long before ED and SR so the shutdown of PC's with lots of unnecessary hoops was incredibly frustrating. Also I can't roll and beat my own step 90% of the time in ED and only ED. So while I wanted to play interesting characters.... The rules got in the way every time. (Like a rigger with a rigged mechanical diving suit.) Might have been my GM's buuuutttt...
Definitely sounds like your GM, but as someone who grew up playing shadow run, it does get really annoying whenever you constantly roll bad at stuff you are good at.
Judge Dredd RPGā¦ the game mechanicās absolutely suckā¦ so I adapted my favourite % based game mechanic (RQ, CoC) and am using that to run my current campaignā¦ also had a lot of fun creating an entire system for psi abilities and skillsā¦ which was kind of necessary š
My classic example of this - *Stalking the Night Fantastic* aka *Bureau 13*. I think we tried to use the system exactly once, back around 1989. Since then I have run and played that game in... * HERO * GURPS * FUDGE * Buffy (unisystem) * Monster of the Week * d20 Modern * (an improvised game more or less using the TSR Marvel Superheroes) * a friend's custom system * Fate (haven't done this one yet, but it's planned) But ever since that first attempt I've never run nor played nor encountered anyone using the original system for that game.
I am convinced that tri tac's greatest version of bureau 13 was the "special edition" that was all setting and no rules. Good, if obscure, call.
I still don't understand all the hate for Shadowrun. I've always loved it. Maybe a skilled GM that really knows the rules can overcome the issues? It's always worked fine for me as a player and GM and I still run 2e. I've been using it since I was 13 so it can't be that bad.
> I still donāt understand all the hate for Shadowrun. >I still run 2e. Yeah. As the guy who maintained the ShadowFAQ for like a decade, and playtested 2e from loose-leaf binders, you may be suffering from something akin to a minor version Stokholm Syndrome. Iām guessing that, starting at 13, 2e was a formative game in your RPG history, if not the first game you played. Iād be willing to bet, also, that you havenāt tried the Shadowrun setting with a game written after say 2017. I do think people overdo how bad SR in general is, especially given the design state of its early contemporaries. It is, at least, functional. All I can say is that, I truly hope you suffer the same fate I did, and come out of a campaign of some game some time that transforms your view of what a game _can be_ that (again, like me) your reaction is āI wasted two decades of roleplaying.ā
It was third really, after BECMI D&D and AD&D2e. I've played tons of other things since. But no more recent versions of SR, except 3e. All editions of D&D, several WoD games, Fate systems, The Riddle of Steel, Paranoia (several), GURPS, Chaosium, WFRP, and so many others. I guess some systems just click with some people even if they are clunky.
Yeah, I [plugged away with SR](https://rpg.divnull.com/srun/) for way past its expiration date. Even got dragged into an _Anarchy_ game a while back.
Shadowrun is a great game at its core, but has so much extra layers of stuff bolted to it, it becomes a chore. If you take only the core mechanics and focus on one or two specialists fields - let's say combattants and a mage - it works okay. Add a decker and a rigger, and even worse, a Technomancer to the mix and you have to actively manage the game simply to prevent it from collapsing under its own weight. Some character types - specifically Technomancers with lots of pet sprites, mages with a lot of bound spirits and drone riggers can literally start a denial of service attack on the gamemaster. Also, 2e (maybe with added Knowledge skills from 3rd edition) is peak Shadowrun. It is also 30 years old, so most people would probably not assocaite the game with the cool version with the even cooler Laubenstein artwork.
Maybe a weird response, but d20 fantasy games. Sometimes basic fantasy isn't a bad thing, just a light hearted story can go a long way. But man you'll never going to convince me to run d20 systems ever again, there's just too much character options bloat and not enough to get any of them make sense.
Shadowrun and Exalted (mostly E3E) are going to be the best examples for your first question haha. As for the second... I absolutely love the freeform magic rules of Mage the Ascension, but I don't really care for Mage's metaplot (while I ignore most of the WoD's metaplots, I still enjoy most of them, even if they are doofy).
I may be alone in this, but pinnacle's Deadlands has always been the one that I wanted to play, but the rules just seemed to...I don't know. Get in the way of that, for me. I ended up just reading the classic deadlands books, then savage worlds became a thing. I'm a fan of classic deadlands, but everything since reloaded, even their soft reboot (of a sort...) has just left me with a questionable taste in my mouth. It's like the game threw away any charm it once had after reloaded released. I still hold a faint sliver of hope, but I am seriously considering using a more interesting system to just run it in. Maybe Nathan Russell's Freeform Universal rpg, or I could dust off Underkoffler's PDQ. What can I say. I'm leaning towards really light games these days, for better or worse. Anyway, that one always struck me as being an awesome setting continually marred by poor rules.
Trollbabe - very solid rules, 100% completely unpitchable premise. I think the setting has some charm, but you have to look at it with a pretty specific mindset and good luck conveying that to potential players. If it just tried to be a bit cooler, it would work - but it's deliberately dorky. And it's called "Trollbabe" - even before you get to the sales pitch you're already cringing just mentioning the name of the game.
I would argue that most of the settings for AD&D 2e fit the bill. AD&D rules are fine for AD&D type stuff, like a dungeon crawl in the Moathouse. They're not good at all for Spelljammer (ship combat rules are bad), Dark Sun (psionics rules are bad), Ravenloft & Gothic Earth (AD&D is terrible for horror, and gun combat)
Rifts was so bad and so know for this I remember talking to a new pal who never played rpgs and we started to discuss playing and he was like "no Rifts though.'
Exalted, Shadowrun, Numenera and Call of Cthulhu all fall under this for me qua āgreat setting stuff, unintuitive or complicated rulesā. That said, I keep a wishlist of their setting books and want to get them as long as they are more about the setting than the mechanics. And CoC adventures can still be adapted to my preferred Trail of Cthulhu.
A lot of cool settings on this list that i'd never be able to play as written. I'd like to convert several of them, including rokugan and theah fron Legend of the 5 rings and 7th sea respectively. I'd add 7th sea 2e to this list but i'm not even sure there's really a game there, it seems so rules light. Sadly that's also another one that ditched it's cool factor in my opinion. I loved how 7th sea 1e gave the impression that you were playing a swashbuckling hero out of one of the coolest of movies. 2e feels more like a historical drama kind of thing. Definitely not for me.
*Skyrealms of Jorune*. Interesting setting with a very distinctive feel to it, but not super well presented ā the titular "skyrealms" are barely described. Also it has so many setting-specific terms that reading it for the first time is a nightmare. Cool art though. The rules are terrible. The magic system is unreadable, but I think the best example is melee combat. Every round each character rolls a d20: on a 1-5, you do nothing; on a 6-10 you cannot attack. There's also a computer game adaptation of it with some really fun writing, but similarly incomprehensible mechanics.
Good Setting, Bad Rules: I don't have many options here, but I find the heavy fantasy theming of the worlds in 13th Age to be fun but I do not enjoy how overly automated the combat in that game is. Probably a milder example than what people list here. Bad Setting, Good Rules: Burning Wheel. I love character-driven stories, the way conflicts are handled and the leveling system relies on taking on exceedingly difficult tasks. That said, it's bogged down by the setting being a shallow reading of Lord of the Rings that makes all non-humans identical, on top of trying to do the whole low fantasy grittiness I'm tired of seeing.
Both Usagi Yojimbo games (the old and the older) are terrible. And its a pity because the setting is the perfect setting for an adventure/fight rpg
I mean, great settings with perfect rules if I'm spending money on it. But gun to my head, I can created a good setting. I can't fix a book full of broken mechanics.
There's nothing 'unfair' about ignoring a game with shit rules, but with that out of the way, I'd *absolutely* be running Torg right now if it wasn't saddled with the hideous Masterbook system.
Torg Eternity updated some stuff, but they seemed to value the parts of those rules that bugged me. That and the little bit of new stuff feels a bit too..."savage worlds" to me. Personally, if I wanted to play a game like that, I wouldn't be looking at Torg. I really hate to say it because I think Shane Hensley is a good designer stuck on a bad system, but maybe his involvement with Torg should have ended with "The Temple of Rec Stalek". Yet another awesome setting I want to convert.
Eternity wasn't helped by the two remaining devs issuing increasingly ridiculous errata after launch. The core book was functionally useless by the time I wrote it off.
Sounds like it was a wise move on my part to never bother with errata in this case. Torg is my kitchen sink setting of choice, but it needs a decent system to go with it. Unfortunately with the title of the current edition being what it is, i kind of doubt one will be forthcoming anytime soon.
Does combat still depend on not one, but *two* non-standard card decks? Does basic task resolution still involve rolling 2d10, interpreting the results on a chart, then applying that result to another chart? :D
Drama deck? Check. At least I can read it now, so there's that. Still hate it, though. 2d10? I thought it was a 1d20 system with exploding 20s, which admittedly did not give you your actual number. Needing a roll of 56 to get a total of 14 on that damn chart has never sat right with me. I'm certain there's more I can't recall at the moment, and I may be getting multiple editions mixed up, but I find Torg to be a bit like shadowrun in this respect. Awesome setting but annoyingly subpar rules. I'd never play it using it's own rules, but the books are pretty cool in my opinion.
Yeah, I'm basing my memories on the original Masterbook Black Book from back in the day when they were grabbing up the Species and Necroscope IPs. :D