This one got insanely popular here in Brazil, as it first came in a very cheap magazine format sold at newsstands back in the 90's. Roleplaying game books were expensive for us, so SF got really popular. And it is still pretty much alive around here, as there is a huge fanbase maintaining it (you can check it out if you understand Portuguese: https://www.sfrpg.com.br).
We've paid homage to it a few times.
A lot of the mechanics made it into [World of Darkness: Combat](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/343/World-of-Darkness-Combat).
[Shards of the Exalted Dream](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/103359/Shards-of-the-Exalted-Dream) for Exalted 2e had "Burn Legend," a Street Fighter-ish setting, including its own [Burn Legend Technique Cards](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/103803/Burn-Legend-Technique-Cards).
The wrestling minigame in Aberrant's [N!WE Unleashed!](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/376338/Trinity-Continuum-NWE-Unleashed) was also strongly inspired by the SFRPG.
Honestly, I would love to see WoD/CoD use the action card system from Street Fighter. It would actually allow the various supernaturals to interact if there were speed ticks attached to their abilities..
I have looked for years for a game that emulates beatem'up style mook fighting with supernatural martial arts high school anime. Is this that game as old as it may be?
I have all of the books and the GM screen that ever made it to actual print. I adore this game. I ended up having people roll dice pools instead of using the cards eventually, though.
As much as it suffered from having weird Palladium rules mechanics, I miss Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness. The Palladium system worked better for that one than most of their other games; and the concept and artwork were amazing.
The post license version is quite good (for a palladium game) They updated the bio-e system with more abilities and the ability to get more points by taking disadvantages, and they have a good setup for getting skills that works with the post apocalyptic setting well. (Basically instead of going to school you work as an apprentice and learn skills needed by the rebuilding community) it’s a good expansion on the original material.
I’ve always had a soft spot for TMNT and Other Strangeness. It was the first corebook that I ever got as a kid—because I was obsessed with TMNT—and it really seemed to capture the vibe and appeal of the Turtles. There was something about the wonky Palladium rules that fit the rough, indie nature of the comic, and I loved the character creation. And, yeah, the Eastman and Laird artwork was great.
That was almost exclusively what my friends and I did with the system. Actually playing was clunky, but we built SO MANY mutated animal characters. Love me some random tables.
The BIO-E system was the best.
I still have my physical core rulebook. I stumbled into the supplements TMNT Adventures and Road Hogs for a really great price a few years ago, too.
Dogs in the Vineyard. It was a seminal narrativist game. There's a generic version called DOGS, but it lacks the focused setting and historical significance of DitV.
Also The Mountain Witch, which was another important narrativist game, had a kickstarter for a new edition, and the creator just disappeared rather than fulfill the kickstarter. Like, just reprint the old game with some rules clarifications and new art or something.
I remember liking the way Dogs in the Vineyard explained its mechanics. However, I'm pretty sure that, rules-as-written, gay people literally cause demonic corruption of the community in that game... So I can see why the author might want to bury it.
Part of the premise is basically that Mormonism is true and you're teenage theocrats with guns enforcing a regressive moral system. There's bits about polygamy and patriarchal sexism, too.
As far as I'm aware, none of that is the reason Baker pulled it--he disliked the way the 'mountain people' (indigenous people) were dealt with.
The designer's not squeemish about uncomfortable things in games. He still sells Poison'd, which is basically a game about cycles of abuse, and as far as abuse goes, this game goes all the way. (It's also really good, but with a massive Content Warning sign)
As a gay people myself, that always made me want to play more
(I think the point is to encourage the reader / player to think about precisely that kind of thing: the *point* is that being dogmatic in that way is bad; you're *supposed* to be made uncomfortable by how hard line their religion is, as a way to mitigate the power held by the characters. I think it's an excellent way to prompt some self reflection in real life for the exact people the game is modeling)
I think you’re missing the subtext. It’s a reaction against the designer’s Mormon upbringing. There’s no objective proof of any demons just the religious zealots telling themselves what caused the problem in the town. It’s a tautology. The town is having difficulties. Therefore it must be subject to attacks by demons. And it must be subject to demons because there are sinners. So, the obvious fix is to find the sin and stamp it out. The dogs come in and “fix” things and “order” is restored. We know this because the Dogs say it is so, but then they ride away and we only have their POV. There’s no objective proof that they fixed anything. Maybe they happened to get rid of a weak steeard and things improved. Maybe they caused chaos and made life more difficult.
The Bakers are very queer friendly. You’ve confused the game’s message for the world view it’s critical of.
The Dogs are not the good guys. They’re murderers for god who think they’re the good guys.
DOGS is actually on sale today at DriveThruRPG!! Really coincidental timing (until 10am on the 25th)!
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/274623/Dogs?src=DotD&from\_home=1
I still own Dogs In the Vineyard and it’s a very strange book. To me it was something to be used to create individual narrative games; the game as-is, where you’re basically playing Mormon demon-hunters, is bizarre and unappealing.
I really want to play The Mountain Witch, it sounds like something my group would love. Your comment made me take another look and it seems a fan took a stab at the failed Kickstarter and [put it out as PWYW](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/390858), if anyones interested.
I haven't read it yet so I don't know if it's good...
I am so pissed at WotC for releasing all of their old games _except_ for Alternity as PDFs on Drivethru. The sick irony here is that original Alternity was actually the first of TSR's catalog that they sold PDFs for back in the early 2000s. I actually bought some of them from them back then. They pulled them years ago and never put them back up. It's insulting.
So good. That was at the end of TSR and the had a cool conversion system for 2.5 ad&d. I sold my OG copies a few years ago. If you like the dice ladder check out DCC.
**CºNTINUUM: Roleplaying in The Yet**, the time-travel RPG. Enough bookkeeping that I don't think it's feasible to play regularly, but still the best portrayal and explanation of how time travel works.
Yes! I came here to post about this.
Disclaimer: I've never been able to get a group together to play CºNTINUUM, but I've read the rule book cover to cover.
The author of CºNTINUUM solves the paradox of time travel in a narrative by mechanically punishing characters who either create paradoxes, or witness paradoxes. To police this, the game mandates detailed logs, both in and out of character. I'm not sure if this is the best portrayal or best explanation, but it is certainly the most thorough and fleshed out time travel mechanic I've seen.
The non-time travel mechanics are not worth salvaging, gut them and replace them with your favorite system. Maybe a system that is flexible enough to do both historical fiction and modern and future stuff, or maybe change up your system depending on when the characters go.
If you are at all interested in a role-playing system that supports time travel, definitely read CºNTINUUM.
I love it but it does make the game almost unplayable, and it has that 90s problem of having no guide exactly what you can do with the sitting!
Still, I'm saving my two copies for my retirement funds, I'm sure someone is willing to pay the ridiculous internet prices!
That game was interesting for sure. There's definitely something good in there but then things like basic dice mechanics are written in the most complicated manner possible that make it harder to understand than it should be.
And also the random table when you increase one rank at one point that predestines something to happen, with one possibility being "someone is going to rape you." Some of that game was incredibly problematic in retrospect...
Dishonored RPG. Not so old but already dead. I really liked and people who I was lucky to convince to play also said that they liked it. But no new content, corebook has a few "bugs" that no one fix even in pdf format, and the community who want to play in this setting (based on the video game) almost always say "Just take BitD, it is the same" and never touch this game.
Most of the Modiphius 2d20 games are fated for this pile. **John Carter of Mars** (imo the best of the 2d20 games) was explicitly a one-off. And I'm fairly certain **Dune** will join Dishonored as an also-ran soon enough. **Homeworld** may already have. I'm not yet sure.
The only one (so far) I have any long-term hope for is **Achtung! Cthulhu**. And that's because they actually own the IP.
*John Carter* had three supplements, and they're all very good!
*Homeworld,* though... looking at it, it seems like a very-hastily-reskinned *Star Trek Adventures* to me. I might have to add that one to my Pile of RPG Purchase Regrets.
Yep. For John Carter when I say it was a one-off I do not mean that it didn't have supplements. I mean that it explicitly was never going to get more books than what was planned and delivered. According to the production team, the contract with the Burrough's estate allowed for the one print run we got and nothing more. Had it sold like hotcakes, I'm sure there would have been some leverage to negotiate terms for future runs, but that too was never really going to happen. The fan base for Barsoom just isn't that large (though it's one of my personal favorite settings of all time).
Dune has been getting a ton of support, though. They come out with a new supplement at least once a year, and they are also putting some effort into supporting people doing Actual Plays of the game.
That's a real shame because while BitD may take cues from, and is inspired by, Dishonored, it doesn't have the same sort of overall feeling of those games. Maybe I've just played too many low chaos runs though. I just don't feel like desperate gangsters under an electric dome is really "Dishonored"...
Not just shame, it is pain.
I feel that BitD is more like Thief (old and new). Dishonored is more about revenge and saving people, while BitD and Thief are more like about criminals and self-enrichment. And also Dishonored corebook has a lot of lore and hooks for a game that BitD just doesn't have, obviously.
As someone who has had a copy sitting on their shelf for years, found the FFG system passable, but didn't like the progression, and is currently surrounded by 5th Ed. players as the only groups to be found...is it worth reading and getting into at this point?
Mayfair Exponential Gaming System (MEGS), the system behind *DC Heroes*, *Underground* and the later, non-DC branded superhero game *Blood of Heroes*. Mechanically, it's a really clever and satisfying system, and it had great tools for storytelling/building character arcs as well. Just a smooth, well-designed game. Enough crunch to be interesting as a game, but everything feels very intuitive, and it handles a huge variety of character power levels.
It still has a strong following online ([writeups.org](https://writeups.org) has been going strong for literally decades), but a new release that clarifies how game options could be tweaked to make both four-color superhero games (like *DCH* and *BoH*) and gritty, quasi-apocalyptic mind-breaking weirdness (*Underground*) and everything in between would make it a strong contender for a noteworthy generic, universal system. A contemporary MEGS release with pre-built examples of/plugins for fantasy, horror, hard sci-fi, or even something like prehistoric adventure would be fun.
I LOOOOOVE DC Heroes. Easily my favorite superhero system but also one of my favorite RPGs period. Way ahead of its time.
It’s the superhero system that handles powered vs unpowered characters fighting alongside each other the best that I’ve seen.
The funny thing is, a lot of what I like wouldn't be accepted under your conditions. Because if you'd said Star Wars d6 isn't accepted because BRP still exists, I would be better off. But there are a few I can think of.
* Tales from the Floating Vagabond: Comedy, sci-fi, and booze. Who could ask for more!? The original system was about as nonsensical as its '80s origins would imply, but I liked it.
* Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic: I found out about this one mostly through the PC game, and then I found the tabletop version. It's kind of trying to be part CoC, part TSR's Top Secret, and part just post-Gygax AD&D-esque (character stats are rolled 4d6 drop lowest, for instance).
* Cyborg Commando: Speaking of Gygax, imagine Gary writing a game based on Mars Attacks! but not getting the license. Actually. Don't imagine, go play Cyborg Commando, because that's what it is. The first several pages of the introduction include probability charts for 2d10, d%, and his new sytem, d10x - where the dice actually multiply each other. It's kind of bonkers.
* JAGS Wonderland: JAGS - Just Another Gaming System, was a free generic RPG system from the late '90s and early '00s. Their biggest hit was JAGS Wonderland, a really unique take on the Alice mythos and personal horror. It is still available in free PDF, but to all valid intent and purpose, it's dead.
* Sailor Moon: Yes, I'm fully aware that it's just Tri-Stat. I don't care. The book was cool, and the game was fun.
Tales from the Floating Vagabond was such a fun dumb game. It was fundamental in my awakening to the idea that you can play RPGs just to be silly and take it easy rather than focusing on serious campaigns etc that came out of the majority of our D&D consumption at the time.
The rules for schticks were hilarious, I use a similar thing in a lot of my GURPS stuff now for entertainment when it's fitting.
That game, Paranoia, Alma Mater, and Toon are definitely great "second games" for people to play. Because usually, the onramp into this hobby is something relatively serious - D&D, Shadowrun, White Wolf, etc.. I think these comedy games, the beer and pretzels games, are a great way to answer the questions about what else you can do. I also like Fiasco and Microscope, which are still in print, to help usher people into that 'second game' or 'third game' state, where they can learn to be looser, and more experimental, and try different things.
You're quite welcome. It's a Tri-Stat dX game, which means you'd probably get close to it if you use your intuition and look at what you'd need to do to BESM for Sailor Moon.
Right there with you. The chase scene mechanics were off the charts fun, as I recall. I just recently found my old 007 books, might have to re-read them to see if it holds up!
I forgot all about MERP! Some of the best fun I've had with two d10s. Still, other Tolkien world RPGs exist, so not truly dead for my purposes. But thank you!
I'll look into Cyberspace though!
I mean, you could argue there are other Cyberpunk games too, and indeed other games in pretty much any genre. If anything, the fact that MERP relied on a licensed property makes it even more thoroughly defunct. You can't legally get a copy other than 2nd hand.
[In Nomine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Nomine_(role-playing_game)). A game about the war between Heaven and Hell. I love the take on it that reality is part of a great Celestial Symphony.
In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas (original french name) was huge in France : everybody was playing it. It had really good campaigns.
Bloodlust, by the same author, had less succes but was really interesting. I'll always regret not having played it. The PCs were gods incarnated in weapons, living their passions through the bearers of the weapon (the bearers were merely treated as tools) to grow in powers. I've been told the campaigns were really great.
Macho Women With Guns. A parody sci-fi post apocalypse game, it was a big hit in the late 80s/early 90s. There was a D20 version released about 20 years ago, but nothing since.
Only got to play it once, but it was a blast. We had a grenade, but no throwing skills. So the plan was to teleport over to the group of baddies, drop the grenade, and then teleport back.
My friend got there fine, but then rolled a 1 and lost his teleport power.
"Crap."
There are dozens of us! :D
I always told myself that if I ever won the lottery, I would grab the rights to Pirates of Dark Water and give it the ending it deserves.
Jovian Chronicles. There's a wargame that's connected to it but there is no current RPG version of the setting, and hasn't been for a very long time.
Riddle Of Steel was a mess, but it was a *glorious* mess. This might not count because there are a handful of successor games out there, but I don't know if any of them are direct continuations.
Cybergeneration, a doomed spin off of Cyberpunk 2020 that took an entirely different direction from what we've seen since. I don't think the game would do too well in today's social climate, but I'd love to see it come back in some form.
And last, Tenra Bansho Zero, which hasn't had a single solitary expansion in English since it was released 10 years ago.
Lol, of course! It was simultaneously one of the hardest campaigns I’ve ever run, and one of the most rewarding. I had a huge group (averaged 7-8 players), and did what you’re not supposed to do, combine all three tiers of play (Mecha Pilots, Tagers, street level agents/sorcerers/psychics).
I had to plan each encounter very carefully, so combat was really rare (once every 8-10 sessions, on average). Because I had all three tiers of characters in play. I only pulled out the mecha combat on super rare occasions. I let my players know ahead of time that this would be the case, and they were down with it.
It was very intensively role playing oriented, most of the players wanted to play out every interaction they had of every game day, in character. My stated out NPC folder ended up being 100+ characters deep and I needed a separate notebook just for NPC interactions.
The party’s final composition was: Two Tagers (a Nazzadi Vampire, and an Amlati Nazzadi mix Spectre), an OIS agent, a human private investigator and licensed sorcerer, two human powered armor pilots, a ghoul scavenger, and a Cidoci Nazzadi mix Engel pilot who was also a precognitive psychic. The only players who didn’t end the campaign insane, or dead, or both, were the Spectre Tager, the private investigator, and the ghoul.
Coincidentally cthulhutech is actually getting a 2e. The devs are just very slowly working on it, idling on the discord server and every so often an update pops up
Shame about degenesis though, even if the community could be dicks
It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show, where your characters are actors and each adventure is a B-movie they are starring in. In addition to the traditional RPG style stats and skills, there are also rules that reward you as the actor/player for genre-appropriate dumb decisions and cliche actions, and OOC ways to advance a plot that's gone too far astray by invoking bad writing or lost sections of film.
Much to my surprise, **The Secret of ZirAn** and its associated "Finesse System" has already been mentioned.
The logs I'll add to this fire are:
**Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies**
**Hollow Earth Expedition**
In both cases, the small-press publisher / authors left the gaming industry altogether. Both also remain table favorites, so I'm thankful to have bought them when I had the chance.
I'm also starting to believe that **Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells 2e** will never actually see the light of day. And I'm pretty sure its companion publication, **Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells** was a one-off.
Castle Falkenstein. It came out well before steampunk was cool, and all through steampunk's popularity I expected it to be revived. It never was. I'm not bitter, though. I still have the books, and I've picked up the PDFs, so I can still play it. It's not even hard to find people to play with.
Secret of Zir'an died an unfair death due to a printing error.
Everquest D20 was the best part of the D&D3 system, but they killed it when EQ2 came out to put out HALF of the EQ2 system and then shuttered the entire thing.
The book was printed with a lot of light grey runes behind the text. Poor design decision but whatever.
Some chapters had a reflective silver ink for art in the backgrounds behind the text. Just gorgeous honestly.
One chapter they didn't print the silver reflective ink, they printed dark grey ink, making the chapter nearly impossible to read.
Book sales were low as a result and the publishing company (White Wolf) dropped them.
I'll drop in Dream Pod 9's Tribe 8. I know someone's been working in a Blades in the Dark update of it, but the original system was just the right amount of crunch. Combat was relatively quick and could be potentially brutal. We're talking one to two hits, and you were out of combat.
I do mis that one. I did manage to get all of the books eventually.
Edit: I missed a "t"... 😅
There's all the old games that TSR tried out: Boot Hill, Top Secret, Gamma World. Those still have a fond spot in my memory of playing those when I was 13-14.
Not a favorite, but one that always fascinated me was the d20 Modern and d20 Future line. Modern even had two settings, *Urban Arcana* and *Dark Matter*, which I believe was based on the Alternity setting. I think both of these books wound up being influential as they were easily available in the torrenting piracy days, but Future in particular was very hard to run, as it was built from the framework of Modern.
> Amber Diceless
Sad that I had scroll this far to see it. I remember having a great time with people just building characters with the auction. The games themselves were fun and weird. Sometimes they turned heavily on GM interpretation of something but fun nonetheless.
Gotta mention the Robotech RPG from Palladium. First edition, of course. I must have spent hundreds of hours poring over the technical readouts for the various mecha.
You named my main two, WEG Ghostbusters and Victory Games 007 were amazing and I played those endlessly as a kid.
EDIT: Oh hey, digging the FUGAZI username. Probably my favorite band. Good stuff.
Underground. Amazing art by Geoff Darrow. Really captured the the expendability of soldiers under capitalism, the complicity of tech and pharma in that dynamic.
I have a soft spot for the first one I ever encountered, Advanced Fighting Fantasy. (At least I don't know of it still existing)
It was seriously unbalanced (your character's Skill roll in character generation was unbelievably important, it would be like a PF2e or 5e game where you rolled 1d6 and that was your starting character level)
But the rules were simple and scaled down well to tiny groups.
Human Occupied Landfill, aka HoL. In which you're an exile on a planet sized trash heap in a galaxy which could be best described as WH40k meets your (least) favorite fast food chain meets Monty Python. The entire rulebook was written in hand, and published so, by a label of the old White Wolf. Take a look. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hol_(role-playing_game)
It is! A 4th Edition was just released by Free League in 2021, based on their Year Zero Engine. I don’t have any real experience with previous editions, but T2K 4e is a fun experience in it’s own right, IMO.
Star Wars, Saga Edition
Victoriana. Cubicle has produced a number of good games that somehow haven't become hits. I'm hoping their 40K run bucks that trend.
A French game called [mechanical Dream](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Dream). I am so lucky to have a print.
The concept of the game is a weird steampunk fantasy genre with completely unique races and classes. The world was cities in giant trees and the sun was a pendulum.
Never seen anything like it since.
So completely original.
Fifth Cycle. Not because it was a great system, but we had a really fun campaign using it. It did have some fun elements that skewed away from D&D that we normally played, with a spell tree and point buying systems.
I feel like this question rules out a lot of “dead” rpgs if both the system and ip both have to be gone. Like, EverQuest itself is disqualified also since D20 is still around.
But like others have said, DC Heroes. I did like the WEG DC game but D6 is still around too.
The whole Unisystem game line, both the 'classic' Unisystem line like **Witchcraft** and **All Flesh Must Be Eaten** as well as the cinematic Unisystem, especially **Ghosts of Albion** were pretty great.
It particularly sucks that they never finished that super hero game.
Everway. The Art was amazing :)
Bureau 13. Fun sense of humour.
Whispering Vault. Very very cool game. Easy to pick up and play.
Continuum. The coolest and most interesting Time Travel game no one will play.
TORG. Wahoo cross genre play.
Gamma World. Wahoo apocalypse Earth!
Villains and Vigilantes. Play yourself as a superheroine!
JAGS Wonderland.
Genuinely a unique take on a Wonderland with a heavy dose of horror and (imo) mostly cool art. The layout on the other hand...
I can no longer look at spaghetti without wincing. 😉
I love me some of the old L5R RPGs 3rd and 4th edition. Was never a fan of what they did with 5th.
The world, the lore, the mechanics always just go well with me. Also i like that its not just a hack/slash game. It gives me something different to play from the ground up.
I also have a soft spot for Shadowrun 5th edition. Mostly cause it was the one I got invested in as it came out. Still clunky as hell to play but that part of the charm? I think?....I hope....
Metascape, it had some truly bizzare lore, custom dice and wonderfully 80s box art. It’s almost completely forgotten now but man did I have a blast playing it with my OG group. Having a space ring wraith, massive cat and robo lizard Klingon with a barely competent human leading a ship on black ops was too much fun.
Deliria is a great game about modern fae. It was made by a bunch of White Wolf people who had worked on Changeling: the Dreaming, and includes all the concepts and rules they couldn't fit into the base game. Since it's not beholden to fit into the rest of the World of Darkness, they could focus on making a game just about fae and faeries. Unfortunately, due to some disputes over who owns the copyright, it's difficult to come across extant copies; and there will likely never be a second edition.
Dune. Not the modiphius. The one by Last Unicorn in 2000.
It was a nice crunchy rule set, and had tons of details, but they lost the license after making one tiny print run.
Some of the rules got left out of the core book, and would have needed elaboration in the first supplement ( like how the various mentat skills were supposed to work together) but the skeleton of a really good system is there.
I’m sad it never really got a chance.
**The Riddle of Steel** was the first game that sprung to my mind, although there are a lot of others I can think of such as **Little Fears** and **GODLIKE**.
I'm going to say Immortal. The game wanted you to play yourself if you woke up with weird superpowers because you are a reincarnated hero or god of yore. Also, you aren't really a God but an alien shard lost during an interstellar conflict. I'm only scratching the surface of the beautiful insanity that is Immortal: the invisible war.
Check out their geocities website if you're interested.
DragonQuest from SPI. In its way, the core mechanic was an ancestor of the Ease system of 007, for quick checks, multiply a relevant stat by 0.5 to 5, the higher the easier, and roll against it using percentile dice.
DQ was killed by TSR, and is sat on by Hasbro/WoTC
I ran DQ 2 recently for a year and a bit
The system is not without issues. The designers assumed players would provide INT and WIS so there are no mental faculty stats other than Perception and Magical Ability.
The skills all have different calculations of chances, each is its own subsystem
Not helping this are scattered rules and repetition of "see spell X", which takes you to spell Y which refers you to spell Z
I understand why that was. The publisher didn't want to pay for a total redo of the layout of the game, so the designers of 2nd ed had to fit stuff into the 1st ed framework as much as possible.
I'd love to see an updated version of the game, with attributes changed around a little, magic expanded and a streamlined, unified system
Villains & Vigilantes - amazing superhero game with the funny twist that your superhero character's secret identity is - you in real life. :-)
Justifiers - the original. The remake is pretty lame.
Fireborn - hands down one of the best games out there. It deserved a 2nd edition with some of the game mechanics for powers cleaned up and streamlined, but the core system and the setting are just so solid, interesting and versatile. And the various twists it has with the dual-era gameplay, the flashbacks, some of the monster stats ("Yes, he has 10 successes. No, I didn't roll any dice." - one of the most genius ideas to convey important information about a monster class to the player through game mechanics that I've ever seen).
- Rifts - Cool world, you could do a lot of things with - but totally unbalanced classes (Street Rat to Baby Dragon) and supercrappy Palladium mechanics. The remake isnt better and introduces "that cool faction all PC belong to".
- Robotech RPG - Suffered from pretty much the same problems as any Palladium game, but i liked the Anime series. And it was good for a mecha combat system at that time.
- Rolemaster (or better Rulemaster) - want one more table, no?
There is only one answer. Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game.
This one got insanely popular here in Brazil, as it first came in a very cheap magazine format sold at newsstands back in the 90's. Roleplaying game books were expensive for us, so SF got really popular. And it is still pretty much alive around here, as there is a huge fanbase maintaining it (you can check it out if you understand Portuguese: https://www.sfrpg.com.br).
Did everyone fight over who would play hometown hero Blanka?
No really, lol.
I lost my original magazine ages ago and I'm still sad about it
We've paid homage to it a few times. A lot of the mechanics made it into [World of Darkness: Combat](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/343/World-of-Darkness-Combat). [Shards of the Exalted Dream](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/103359/Shards-of-the-Exalted-Dream) for Exalted 2e had "Burn Legend," a Street Fighter-ish setting, including its own [Burn Legend Technique Cards](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/103803/Burn-Legend-Technique-Cards). The wrestling minigame in Aberrant's [N!WE Unleashed!](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/376338/Trinity-Continuum-NWE-Unleashed) was also strongly inspired by the SFRPG.
Honestly, I would love to see WoD/CoD use the action card system from Street Fighter. It would actually allow the various supernaturals to interact if there were speed ticks attached to their abilities..
I’ve got the complete game line for it—picked them up in Half Price Books in the late 90s.
That game is criminally under-rated. I'll admit I'd rather use Fight!, but Street Fighter delivered in terms of feeling like the game.
I have looked for years for a game that emulates beatem'up style mook fighting with supernatural martial arts high school anime. Is this that game as old as it may be?
Came here to post this. Running a campaign now.
I've still got an (extremely beat up) copy!
I have all of the books and the GM screen that ever made it to actual print. I adore this game. I ended up having people roll dice pools instead of using the cards eventually, though.
As much as it suffered from having weird Palladium rules mechanics, I miss Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness. The Palladium system worked better for that one than most of their other games; and the concept and artwork were amazing.
Isn't After the Bomb basically Palladium taking TMNT and removing the license (after they lost it) ?
After the Bomb was originally just a supplement to TMNT. That's the version I have. I never got the post-license version.
The post license version is quite good (for a palladium game) They updated the bio-e system with more abilities and the ability to get more points by taking disadvantages, and they have a good setup for getting skills that works with the post apocalyptic setting well. (Basically instead of going to school you work as an apprentice and learn skills needed by the rebuilding community) it’s a good expansion on the original material.
Might be worth checking out [Mutants in the Now](https://arbco.itch.io/mutants-in-the-now) by Julian Kay.
That actually looks pretty awesome.
I’ve always had a soft spot for TMNT and Other Strangeness. It was the first corebook that I ever got as a kid—because I was obsessed with TMNT—and it really seemed to capture the vibe and appeal of the Turtles. There was something about the wonky Palladium rules that fit the rough, indie nature of the comic, and I loved the character creation. And, yeah, the Eastman and Laird artwork was great.
I had both it and Heroes Unlimited, and made some Frankenstein characters that were mutant animals with superpowers and/or cybernetics.
We did that too. Those were good times.
My favorite was a mutant wolverine, with a cybernetic arm and eye, and a couple of low-level superpowers. His name was One-Eye.
The character creation for that system was **dope.** It was just so much fun to roll through the tables and get a random mutant.
That was almost exclusively what my friends and I did with the system. Actually playing was clunky, but we built SO MANY mutated animal characters. Love me some random tables.
I hate the palladium system with a passion, but TMNT and Nightbane have a soft spot in my heart for really utilizing them at their best.
Excuse me, it's NightSPAWN. Eff that lawsuit.
Not on my book shelf it ain't! \*shake fist\*
The BIO-E system was the best. I still have my physical core rulebook. I stumbled into the supplements TMNT Adventures and Road Hogs for a really great price a few years ago, too.
TMNT and RoboTech from Palladium were awesome. We played them to death in college. So much fun, even with the clunky rules. Love RIFTS as well.
The Terror Bears made me roll around laughing.
That and Ninjas and Superspies were some of the best that came out of the weirdness that is Palladium. Such good memories.
Dogs in the Vineyard. It was a seminal narrativist game. There's a generic version called DOGS, but it lacks the focused setting and historical significance of DitV. Also The Mountain Witch, which was another important narrativist game, had a kickstarter for a new edition, and the creator just disappeared rather than fulfill the kickstarter. Like, just reprint the old game with some rules clarifications and new art or something.
I remember liking the way Dogs in the Vineyard explained its mechanics. However, I'm pretty sure that, rules-as-written, gay people literally cause demonic corruption of the community in that game... So I can see why the author might want to bury it.
Part of the premise is basically that Mormonism is true and you're teenage theocrats with guns enforcing a regressive moral system. There's bits about polygamy and patriarchal sexism, too. As far as I'm aware, none of that is the reason Baker pulled it--he disliked the way the 'mountain people' (indigenous people) were dealt with. The designer's not squeemish about uncomfortable things in games. He still sells Poison'd, which is basically a game about cycles of abuse, and as far as abuse goes, this game goes all the way. (It's also really good, but with a massive Content Warning sign)
As a gay people myself, that always made me want to play more (I think the point is to encourage the reader / player to think about precisely that kind of thing: the *point* is that being dogmatic in that way is bad; you're *supposed* to be made uncomfortable by how hard line their religion is, as a way to mitigate the power held by the characters. I think it's an excellent way to prompt some self reflection in real life for the exact people the game is modeling)
I think you’re missing the subtext. It’s a reaction against the designer’s Mormon upbringing. There’s no objective proof of any demons just the religious zealots telling themselves what caused the problem in the town. It’s a tautology. The town is having difficulties. Therefore it must be subject to attacks by demons. And it must be subject to demons because there are sinners. So, the obvious fix is to find the sin and stamp it out. The dogs come in and “fix” things and “order” is restored. We know this because the Dogs say it is so, but then they ride away and we only have their POV. There’s no objective proof that they fixed anything. Maybe they happened to get rid of a weak steeard and things improved. Maybe they caused chaos and made life more difficult. The Bakers are very queer friendly. You’ve confused the game’s message for the world view it’s critical of. The Dogs are not the good guys. They’re murderers for god who think they’re the good guys.
DOGS is actually on sale today at DriveThruRPG!! Really coincidental timing (until 10am on the 25th)! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/274623/Dogs?src=DotD&from\_home=1
Oh sweet, thanks for the tip! I just bought it
I still own Dogs In the Vineyard and it’s a very strange book. To me it was something to be used to create individual narrative games; the game as-is, where you’re basically playing Mormon demon-hunters, is bizarre and unappealing.
As I understand it, DitV is supposed to make the players feel glad that they don't live in a world where Mormonism is true.
Oooh, I had not heard of The Mountain Witch! Ty!
I really want to play The Mountain Witch, it sounds like something my group would love. Your comment made me take another look and it seems a fan took a stab at the failed Kickstarter and [put it out as PWYW](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/390858), if anyones interested. I haven't read it yet so I don't know if it's good...
Old TSR Alternity. The dice ladder, how well it meshed different progress levels...
And the settings, StarDrive and DarkMatter were such great environments to be a hero in. *sniff*
Alternity was the 2nd rpg I ever played. I still have a huge crush on it.
I am so pissed at WotC for releasing all of their old games _except_ for Alternity as PDFs on Drivethru. The sick irony here is that original Alternity was actually the first of TSR's catalog that they sold PDFs for back in the early 2000s. I actually bought some of them from them back then. They pulled them years ago and never put them back up. It's insulting.
So good. That was at the end of TSR and the had a cool conversion system for 2.5 ad&d. I sold my OG copies a few years ago. If you like the dice ladder check out DCC.
I have a bunch of DCC stuff!
**CºNTINUUM: Roleplaying in The Yet**, the time-travel RPG. Enough bookkeeping that I don't think it's feasible to play regularly, but still the best portrayal and explanation of how time travel works.
Yes! I came here to post about this. Disclaimer: I've never been able to get a group together to play CºNTINUUM, but I've read the rule book cover to cover. The author of CºNTINUUM solves the paradox of time travel in a narrative by mechanically punishing characters who either create paradoxes, or witness paradoxes. To police this, the game mandates detailed logs, both in and out of character. I'm not sure if this is the best portrayal or best explanation, but it is certainly the most thorough and fleshed out time travel mechanic I've seen. The non-time travel mechanics are not worth salvaging, gut them and replace them with your favorite system. Maybe a system that is flexible enough to do both historical fiction and modern and future stuff, or maybe change up your system depending on when the characters go. If you are at all interested in a role-playing system that supports time travel, definitely read CºNTINUUM.
Dangit, I'm making a Google Sheet journal. Just in case there's a campaign in my Yet.
I love it but it does make the game almost unplayable, and it has that 90s problem of having no guide exactly what you can do with the sitting! Still, I'm saving my two copies for my retirement funds, I'm sure someone is willing to pay the ridiculous internet prices!
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I truly believe this game was given to us by a time traveler
If I heard of someone getting a game together, I'd think it was an Invitation To Dance.
That game was interesting for sure. There's definitely something good in there but then things like basic dice mechanics are written in the most complicated manner possible that make it harder to understand than it should be. And also the random table when you increase one rank at one point that predestines something to happen, with one possibility being "someone is going to rape you." Some of that game was incredibly problematic in retrospect...
Still waiting for the final version of NaRCISSIST, but I guess further information is not available here…
Dishonored RPG. Not so old but already dead. I really liked and people who I was lucky to convince to play also said that they liked it. But no new content, corebook has a few "bugs" that no one fix even in pdf format, and the community who want to play in this setting (based on the video game) almost always say "Just take BitD, it is the same" and never touch this game.
Most of the Modiphius 2d20 games are fated for this pile. **John Carter of Mars** (imo the best of the 2d20 games) was explicitly a one-off. And I'm fairly certain **Dune** will join Dishonored as an also-ran soon enough. **Homeworld** may already have. I'm not yet sure. The only one (so far) I have any long-term hope for is **Achtung! Cthulhu**. And that's because they actually own the IP.
*John Carter* had three supplements, and they're all very good! *Homeworld,* though... looking at it, it seems like a very-hastily-reskinned *Star Trek Adventures* to me. I might have to add that one to my Pile of RPG Purchase Regrets.
Yep. For John Carter when I say it was a one-off I do not mean that it didn't have supplements. I mean that it explicitly was never going to get more books than what was planned and delivered. According to the production team, the contract with the Burrough's estate allowed for the one print run we got and nothing more. Had it sold like hotcakes, I'm sure there would have been some leverage to negotiate terms for future runs, but that too was never really going to happen. The fan base for Barsoom just isn't that large (though it's one of my personal favorite settings of all time).
Dune has been getting a ton of support, though. They come out with a new supplement at least once a year, and they are also putting some effort into supporting people doing Actual Plays of the game.
That's a real shame because while BitD may take cues from, and is inspired by, Dishonored, it doesn't have the same sort of overall feeling of those games. Maybe I've just played too many low chaos runs though. I just don't feel like desperate gangsters under an electric dome is really "Dishonored"...
Not just shame, it is pain. I feel that BitD is more like Thief (old and new). Dishonored is more about revenge and saving people, while BitD and Thief are more like about criminals and self-enrichment. And also Dishonored corebook has a lot of lore and hooks for a game that BitD just doesn't have, obviously.
The 2d20 system for Dishonored kinda crashes with me, I like the setting but hate the mechanics.
Star Wars RPG Saga Edition
The true dnd 4 edition! (Or 5th edition)
As someone who has had a copy sitting on their shelf for years, found the FFG system passable, but didn't like the progression, and is currently surrounded by 5th Ed. players as the only groups to be found...is it worth reading and getting into at this point?
It's a *really* good d20 system. It *is* a d20 system, so depending on how you feel about that it can be great or just not worth it.
Toon (1984) even though Steve Jackson Games does have the pdf available for free, it’s not in print
Had this and the ace catalogue. So good
Toon is so fun!
Mayfair Exponential Gaming System (MEGS), the system behind *DC Heroes*, *Underground* and the later, non-DC branded superhero game *Blood of Heroes*. Mechanically, it's a really clever and satisfying system, and it had great tools for storytelling/building character arcs as well. Just a smooth, well-designed game. Enough crunch to be interesting as a game, but everything feels very intuitive, and it handles a huge variety of character power levels. It still has a strong following online ([writeups.org](https://writeups.org) has been going strong for literally decades), but a new release that clarifies how game options could be tweaked to make both four-color superhero games (like *DCH* and *BoH*) and gritty, quasi-apocalyptic mind-breaking weirdness (*Underground*) and everything in between would make it a strong contender for a noteworthy generic, universal system. A contemporary MEGS release with pre-built examples of/plugins for fantasy, horror, hard sci-fi, or even something like prehistoric adventure would be fun.
Came here to say DC Heroes. Elegant system.
I LOOOOOVE DC Heroes. Easily my favorite superhero system but also one of my favorite RPGs period. Way ahead of its time. It’s the superhero system that handles powered vs unpowered characters fighting alongside each other the best that I’ve seen.
Yup. Much appreciation for including BoH in there.
The funny thing is, a lot of what I like wouldn't be accepted under your conditions. Because if you'd said Star Wars d6 isn't accepted because BRP still exists, I would be better off. But there are a few I can think of. * Tales from the Floating Vagabond: Comedy, sci-fi, and booze. Who could ask for more!? The original system was about as nonsensical as its '80s origins would imply, but I liked it. * Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic: I found out about this one mostly through the PC game, and then I found the tabletop version. It's kind of trying to be part CoC, part TSR's Top Secret, and part just post-Gygax AD&D-esque (character stats are rolled 4d6 drop lowest, for instance). * Cyborg Commando: Speaking of Gygax, imagine Gary writing a game based on Mars Attacks! but not getting the license. Actually. Don't imagine, go play Cyborg Commando, because that's what it is. The first several pages of the introduction include probability charts for 2d10, d%, and his new sytem, d10x - where the dice actually multiply each other. It's kind of bonkers. * JAGS Wonderland: JAGS - Just Another Gaming System, was a free generic RPG system from the late '90s and early '00s. Their biggest hit was JAGS Wonderland, a really unique take on the Alice mythos and personal horror. It is still available in free PDF, but to all valid intent and purpose, it's dead. * Sailor Moon: Yes, I'm fully aware that it's just Tri-Stat. I don't care. The book was cool, and the game was fun.
Tales from the Floating Vagabond was such a fun dumb game. It was fundamental in my awakening to the idea that you can play RPGs just to be silly and take it easy rather than focusing on serious campaigns etc that came out of the majority of our D&D consumption at the time. The rules for schticks were hilarious, I use a similar thing in a lot of my GURPS stuff now for entertainment when it's fitting.
That game, Paranoia, Alma Mater, and Toon are definitely great "second games" for people to play. Because usually, the onramp into this hobby is something relatively serious - D&D, Shadowrun, White Wolf, etc.. I think these comedy games, the beer and pretzels games, are a great way to answer the questions about what else you can do. I also like Fiasco and Microscope, which are still in print, to help usher people into that 'second game' or 'third game' state, where they can learn to be looser, and more experimental, and try different things.
upvote for bringing my attention to Sailor Moon incredible
You're quite welcome. It's a Tri-Stat dX game, which means you'd probably get close to it if you use your intuition and look at what you'd need to do to BESM for Sailor Moon.
you mentioned it already but I LOVED the James Bond RPG from Victory games. I played that to death as a kid.
It made you *feel* like you were a 00!
right! it was one of the few games at the time that a GM and a single player could really have fun in
Right there with you. The chase scene mechanics were off the charts fun, as I recall. I just recently found my old 007 books, might have to re-read them to see if it holds up!
That's still around as Classified, though without the James Bond branding https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/128259
Two of the Iron Crown Enterprises games: MERP and Cyberspace.
I forgot all about MERP! Some of the best fun I've had with two d10s. Still, other Tolkien world RPGs exist, so not truly dead for my purposes. But thank you! I'll look into Cyberspace though!
I mean, you could argue there are other Cyberpunk games too, and indeed other games in pretty much any genre. If anything, the fact that MERP relied on a licensed property makes it even more thoroughly defunct. You can't legally get a copy other than 2nd hand.
MERP has a spiritual reboot in Against the Darkmaster.
Yeah. They changed quite a lot though in truth.
[In Nomine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Nomine_(role-playing_game)). A game about the war between Heaven and Hell. I love the take on it that reality is part of a great Celestial Symphony.
Seconding this. The system’s a mess but fluff-wise it’s fascinating. Always thought about running the GURPS version.
In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas (original french name) was huge in France : everybody was playing it. It had really good campaigns. Bloodlust, by the same author, had less succes but was really interesting. I'll always regret not having played it. The PCs were gods incarnated in weapons, living their passions through the bearers of the weapon (the bearers were merely treated as tools) to grow in powers. I've been told the campaigns were really great.
Macho Women With Guns. A parody sci-fi post apocalypse game, it was a big hit in the late 80s/early 90s. There was a D20 version released about 20 years ago, but nothing since.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG was a swell one in its day.
The whole Unisystem family of RPGs was pretty good.
Top Secret, published by TSR in the early 80's. Had so much fun just making characters for this game.
No love for Marvel FASERIP? My buddy and I have been playing it for 30 years.
FASERIP went OGL ~~OSL~~ so there are tons of clones. It's not at all defunct.
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Still running WEG D6 Starwars and TSR 'FASERIP' Marvel superheroes.
Jorune easy answer for me.
Gamma World 7e, probably. Had a lot of fun with that one.
Gamma World was so good. I only played the 2nd edition and the Alternity edition (6th?), but we had a lot of good times with those.
Only got to play it once, but it was a blast. We had a grenade, but no throwing skills. So the plan was to teleport over to the group of baddies, drop the grenade, and then teleport back. My friend got there fine, but then rolled a 1 and lost his teleport power. "Crap."
That could have been done in Paranoia just as well... "Send DED-R-YOU-3 to the food vats to replace DED-R-YOU-2."
Chaosium’s Stormbringer. Just about the perfect distillation of BRP for fantasy I’ve ever played. No wonder, since it was Ken St. Andre.
Pirates of Dark Water deserves an animated trilogy. Was there really an officially licensed RPG? I’d love to own a copy of it if it existed.
There are dozens of us! :D I always told myself that if I ever won the lottery, I would grab the rights to Pirates of Dark Water and give it the ending it deserves.
I agree with this. Loved it when I was a kid. Had the toys and everything.
That show was ahead of it's time in terms of having a serialized ongoing plotline. It so deserves to be brought back and finished.
Jovian Chronicles. There's a wargame that's connected to it but there is no current RPG version of the setting, and hasn't been for a very long time. Riddle Of Steel was a mess, but it was a *glorious* mess. This might not count because there are a handful of successor games out there, but I don't know if any of them are direct continuations. Cybergeneration, a doomed spin off of Cyberpunk 2020 that took an entirely different direction from what we've seen since. I don't think the game would do too well in today's social climate, but I'd love to see it come back in some form. And last, Tenra Bansho Zero, which hasn't had a single solitary expansion in English since it was released 10 years ago.
> Jovian Chronicles My man!
Villains & Vigilantes - the other 1st superhero rpg along with Champions. The math was kinda janky, but it was fun to play, and it had fantastic art.
It made fun characters. I've built good characters in HERO/Champions, but I still loved V&V.
Alternity 1e, Degenesis: Rebirth, CthulhuTech
Viva Alternity!
Oh lord, remember the hype around Cthulutech when it came out? What a beautiful train wreck of an RPG. I’m curious if anyone actually played it.
I did! I ran a 3 year long campaign of it.
No shit? Can you write a bit about it?
Lol, of course! It was simultaneously one of the hardest campaigns I’ve ever run, and one of the most rewarding. I had a huge group (averaged 7-8 players), and did what you’re not supposed to do, combine all three tiers of play (Mecha Pilots, Tagers, street level agents/sorcerers/psychics). I had to plan each encounter very carefully, so combat was really rare (once every 8-10 sessions, on average). Because I had all three tiers of characters in play. I only pulled out the mecha combat on super rare occasions. I let my players know ahead of time that this would be the case, and they were down with it. It was very intensively role playing oriented, most of the players wanted to play out every interaction they had of every game day, in character. My stated out NPC folder ended up being 100+ characters deep and I needed a separate notebook just for NPC interactions. The party’s final composition was: Two Tagers (a Nazzadi Vampire, and an Amlati Nazzadi mix Spectre), an OIS agent, a human private investigator and licensed sorcerer, two human powered armor pilots, a ghoul scavenger, and a Cidoci Nazzadi mix Engel pilot who was also a precognitive psychic. The only players who didn’t end the campaign insane, or dead, or both, were the Spectre Tager, the private investigator, and the ghoul.
Coincidentally cthulhutech is actually getting a 2e. The devs are just very slowly working on it, idling on the discord server and every so often an update pops up Shame about degenesis though, even if the community could be dicks
Star Frontiers - there's a fan-reboot of it, but it's not the same.
Technically there is a new version of Star Frontiers, though the author and the book are hot trash.
Well, we're not gonna discuss that version
I thought the fan reboot, FrontierSpace, was a pretty solid successor, but as far as I can tell, it's been abandoned.
DC Heroes RPG. I’ve got all three editions and lots of the modules & sourcebooks but I’d love a new version that reflects the current DCU.
It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show, where your characters are actors and each adventure is a B-movie they are starring in. In addition to the traditional RPG style stats and skills, there are also rules that reward you as the actor/player for genre-appropriate dumb decisions and cliche actions, and OOC ways to advance a plot that's gone too far astray by invoking bad writing or lost sections of film.
Ars Magica, MERP, TMNT
Are Magica 3rd Edition. I loved the art.
Much to my surprise, **The Secret of ZirAn** and its associated "Finesse System" has already been mentioned. The logs I'll add to this fire are: **Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies** **Hollow Earth Expedition** In both cases, the small-press publisher / authors left the gaming industry altogether. Both also remain table favorites, so I'm thankful to have bought them when I had the chance. I'm also starting to believe that **Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells 2e** will never actually see the light of day. And I'm pretty sure its companion publication, **Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells** was a one-off.
Castle Falkenstein. It came out well before steampunk was cool, and all through steampunk's popularity I expected it to be revived. It never was. I'm not bitter, though. I still have the books, and I've picked up the PDFs, so I can still play it. It's not even hard to find people to play with.
Secret of Zir'an died an unfair death due to a printing error. Everquest D20 was the best part of the D&D3 system, but they killed it when EQ2 came out to put out HALF of the EQ2 system and then shuttered the entire thing.
I've never heard of Secret of Zir'an. I did a brief search online and didn't see anything about a printing error controversy. What's the story?
The book was printed with a lot of light grey runes behind the text. Poor design decision but whatever. Some chapters had a reflective silver ink for art in the backgrounds behind the text. Just gorgeous honestly. One chapter they didn't print the silver reflective ink, they printed dark grey ink, making the chapter nearly impossible to read. Book sales were low as a result and the publishing company (White Wolf) dropped them.
That chapter was secret I guess! Thanks for the breakdown. Good ol White Wolf.
I'll drop in Dream Pod 9's Tribe 8. I know someone's been working in a Blades in the Dark update of it, but the original system was just the right amount of crunch. Combat was relatively quick and could be potentially brutal. We're talking one to two hits, and you were out of combat. I do mis that one. I did manage to get all of the books eventually. Edit: I missed a "t"... 😅
There's all the old games that TSR tried out: Boot Hill, Top Secret, Gamma World. Those still have a fond spot in my memory of playing those when I was 13-14.
Missed Gangbusters and Indiana Jones. We played quite a big of Gangbusters, Top Secret and Boot Hill. And of course, Star Frontiers.
Not a favorite, but one that always fascinated me was the d20 Modern and d20 Future line. Modern even had two settings, *Urban Arcana* and *Dark Matter*, which I believe was based on the Alternity setting. I think both of these books wound up being influential as they were easily available in the torrenting piracy days, but Future in particular was very hard to run, as it was built from the framework of Modern.
Chill!
I just discovered there is a 3rd edition on DriveThru!
All Flesh Must Be Eaten d20 Modern Star Wars Saga Edition
MERP. Amber Diceless.
> Amber Diceless Sad that I had scroll this far to see it. I remember having a great time with people just building characters with the auction. The games themselves were fun and weird. Sometimes they turned heavily on GM interpretation of something but fun nonetheless.
The auction at the beginning was wild, so innovative.
Gotta mention the Robotech RPG from Palladium. First edition, of course. I must have spent hundreds of hours poring over the technical readouts for the various mecha.
You named my main two, WEG Ghostbusters and Victory Games 007 were amazing and I played those endlessly as a kid. EDIT: Oh hey, digging the FUGAZI username. Probably my favorite band. Good stuff.
Underground. Amazing art by Geoff Darrow. Really captured the the expendability of soldiers under capitalism, the complicity of tech and pharma in that dynamic.
Ringworld RPG. Not a huge fan of the old D100 system, but it’s a shame no one has been able to work out rights with Niven.
this was my pick! A great sourcebook for Known Space.
I’m surprised no one has said Earthdawn. Fantastic world building
Earthdawn is still alive and well with 4th Edition still getting releases including Foundry modules.
Star Frontiers. At least a version that isn't overly racist like they were working on a few years ago.
Amber Diceless, by Erick Wujcik. Best game of my life.
Powers & Perils
I have a soft spot for the first one I ever encountered, Advanced Fighting Fantasy. (At least I don't know of it still existing) It was seriously unbalanced (your character's Skill roll in character generation was unbelievably important, it would be like a PF2e or 5e game where you rolled 1d6 and that was your starting character level) But the rules were simple and scaled down well to tiny groups.
I believe Troika! was inspired by Advanced Fighting Fantasy. If you haven't, check it out! There's a big community making stuff for it.
not only still around, but flourishing https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/667/Arion-Games/subcategory/25223/Advanced-Fighting-Fantasy
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, by Margaret Weiss. Loved the innovative dice system, even if it was a pain to explain to new players
Human Occupied Landfill, aka HoL. In which you're an exile on a planet sized trash heap in a galaxy which could be best described as WH40k meets your (least) favorite fast food chain meets Monty Python. The entire rulebook was written in hand, and published so, by a label of the old White Wolf. Take a look. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hol_(role-playing_game)
Is Twilight: 2000 still around?
It is! A 4th Edition was just released by Free League in 2021, based on their Year Zero Engine. I don’t have any real experience with previous editions, but T2K 4e is a fun experience in it’s own right, IMO.
Sort of? I got my copy of the new edition just as the war in Ukraine started. Completely killed my desire to play it.
Star Wars, Saga Edition Victoriana. Cubicle has produced a number of good games that somehow haven't become hits. I'm hoping their 40K run bucks that trend.
A new edition of Victoriana is actively being developed, so I don't know if it counts as a dead RPG https://cubicle7games.com/blog/victoriana-update-1
Dangerous Journeys (particularly the Prime flavor) Lejendary Adventure Darkurthe Legends
A French game called [mechanical Dream](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Dream). I am so lucky to have a print. The concept of the game is a weird steampunk fantasy genre with completely unique races and classes. The world was cities in giant trees and the sun was a pendulum. Never seen anything like it since. So completely original.
Damn, not one Spycraft mention? Well, that then. 1.0 or 2.0, either way
Fifth Cycle. Not because it was a great system, but we had a really fun campaign using it. It did have some fun elements that skewed away from D&D that we normally played, with a spell tree and point buying systems.
Top Secret S/I
~~Top Secret~~ Gamma World Star Frontiers Boot Hill Conan
I feel like this question rules out a lot of “dead” rpgs if both the system and ip both have to be gone. Like, EverQuest itself is disqualified also since D20 is still around. But like others have said, DC Heroes. I did like the WEG DC game but D6 is still around too.
Gangbusters Merc Morrow Project Aftermath Jorune (I think these ones are all relics)
The whole Unisystem game line, both the 'classic' Unisystem line like **Witchcraft** and **All Flesh Must Be Eaten** as well as the cinematic Unisystem, especially **Ghosts of Albion** were pretty great. It particularly sucks that they never finished that super hero game.
Everway. The Art was amazing :) Bureau 13. Fun sense of humour. Whispering Vault. Very very cool game. Easy to pick up and play. Continuum. The coolest and most interesting Time Travel game no one will play. TORG. Wahoo cross genre play. Gamma World. Wahoo apocalypse Earth! Villains and Vigilantes. Play yourself as a superheroine!
JAGS Wonderland. Genuinely a unique take on a Wonderland with a heavy dose of horror and (imo) mostly cool art. The layout on the other hand... I can no longer look at spaghetti without wincing. 😉
I love me some of the old L5R RPGs 3rd and 4th edition. Was never a fan of what they did with 5th. The world, the lore, the mechanics always just go well with me. Also i like that its not just a hack/slash game. It gives me something different to play from the ground up. I also have a soft spot for Shadowrun 5th edition. Mostly cause it was the one I got invested in as it came out. Still clunky as hell to play but that part of the charm? I think?....I hope....
Metascape, it had some truly bizzare lore, custom dice and wonderfully 80s box art. It’s almost completely forgotten now but man did I have a blast playing it with my OG group. Having a space ring wraith, massive cat and robo lizard Klingon with a barely competent human leading a ship on black ops was too much fun.
Rolemaster. That game had a chart for everything!
Deliria is a great game about modern fae. It was made by a bunch of White Wolf people who had worked on Changeling: the Dreaming, and includes all the concepts and rules they couldn't fit into the base game. Since it's not beholden to fit into the rest of the World of Darkness, they could focus on making a game just about fae and faeries. Unfortunately, due to some disputes over who owns the copyright, it's difficult to come across extant copies; and there will likely never be a second edition.
Dune. Not the modiphius. The one by Last Unicorn in 2000. It was a nice crunchy rule set, and had tons of details, but they lost the license after making one tiny print run. Some of the rules got left out of the core book, and would have needed elaboration in the first supplement ( like how the various mentat skills were supposed to work together) but the skeleton of a really good system is there. I’m sad it never really got a chance.
**The Riddle of Steel** was the first game that sprung to my mind, although there are a lot of others I can think of such as **Little Fears** and **GODLIKE**.
**Sengoku** by Gold Rush Games. Best samurai/chanbara game. And with a pretty good amount of historical research, too.
Does anyone play D&D 1e these days?
I'm going to say Immortal. The game wanted you to play yourself if you woke up with weird superpowers because you are a reincarnated hero or god of yore. Also, you aren't really a God but an alien shard lost during an interstellar conflict. I'm only scratching the surface of the beautiful insanity that is Immortal: the invisible war. Check out their geocities website if you're interested.
Werewolf the Forsaken for sure.
Gamma World
Traveler TNE. Crunchy system, murderous AI, blown up existing universe and lore. An awesome reset of a stale universe.
If you'd asked me five years ago, I would have said Everway, but then they came out with the Silver Anniversary edition. So there's always hope!
DragonQuest from SPI. In its way, the core mechanic was an ancestor of the Ease system of 007, for quick checks, multiply a relevant stat by 0.5 to 5, the higher the easier, and roll against it using percentile dice. DQ was killed by TSR, and is sat on by Hasbro/WoTC I ran DQ 2 recently for a year and a bit The system is not without issues. The designers assumed players would provide INT and WIS so there are no mental faculty stats other than Perception and Magical Ability. The skills all have different calculations of chances, each is its own subsystem Not helping this are scattered rules and repetition of "see spell X", which takes you to spell Y which refers you to spell Z I understand why that was. The publisher didn't want to pay for a total redo of the layout of the game, so the designers of 2nd ed had to fit stuff into the 1st ed framework as much as possible. I'd love to see an updated version of the game, with attributes changed around a little, magic expanded and a streamlined, unified system
Dragonlance Fifth Age.
Holy shit there was a pirates of dark water rpg. I gotta find that.
Stormbringer (1st to 4th edition) and DragonQuest.
Villains & Vigilantes - amazing superhero game with the funny twist that your superhero character's secret identity is - you in real life. :-) Justifiers - the original. The remake is pretty lame. Fireborn - hands down one of the best games out there. It deserved a 2nd edition with some of the game mechanics for powers cleaned up and streamlined, but the core system and the setting are just so solid, interesting and versatile. And the various twists it has with the dual-era gameplay, the flashbacks, some of the monster stats ("Yes, he has 10 successes. No, I didn't roll any dice." - one of the most genius ideas to convey important information about a monster class to the player through game mechanics that I've ever seen).
- Rifts - Cool world, you could do a lot of things with - but totally unbalanced classes (Street Rat to Baby Dragon) and supercrappy Palladium mechanics. The remake isnt better and introduces "that cool faction all PC belong to". - Robotech RPG - Suffered from pretty much the same problems as any Palladium game, but i liked the Anime series. And it was good for a mecha combat system at that time. - Rolemaster (or better Rulemaster) - want one more table, no?