I’d be interested to see what thoughts people have on alternative games to D&D 3rd and 4th edition. What other fantasy-genre games have people played, and what are your impressions?
I’ve played Cthulhu: Dark Ages, but it was sort of a drag. My character really couldn’t really do anything.
Mongoose Runequest seems to be the biggest alternative to D&D, although players who think 4th edition is better for creating PCs than 3rd edition would probably hate Runequest: there are no classes or levels to guide skill selections, and nothing keeps anybody from being a warrior/wizard/bard/priest except for getting initiation/training and the problem of stretching skill points in too many directions. On the other hand, it offers the chance to be gritty while still allowing for heroic actions. Somehow, my thoughts are that Runequest would be better for the modern era, although I have ideas for converting Iron Kingdoms to Runequest and using Runequest for a game based in Atlantis. I plan to give the game a try with the published Slaine setting, based on ancient Celt culture.
One of the better game si ha ve played has been Deadlands by Pinnacle Entertainment group. Gotta say one of the better more involving systems out there.
I would have to say Savage Worlds by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. It is more of a rules lite system, but it can handle just about any genre out there.
Savage Worlds is supposed to be pretty good and easy to learn. I haven’t played it yet, but one of my players does. He seems to like it quite well. They also have a new fantaasy setting out called Sundered Skies. Here is the blurb about it from their web site.
A shattered world. A thousand floating islands. A constant glow of madness. Sundered Skies begins where every other world ends.
The people of the Skies survive, tested by an unimaginable apocalypse, struggling daily against ravenous beasts, sky pirates, and the effects of the inescapable voidglow! But the fate of the Skies is in danger! The magic of the glow is not the only taint in this unforgiving realm. Dark forces conspire to bring the Skies to the brink of an even greater catastrophe. Can you survive long enough to discover the secrets of Sundered Skies? Sundered Skies is a dark fantasy Plot Point™ setting for the award-winning Savage Worlds RPG™
Fantasy Hero isn’t bad (I like the Hero System for supers), but you need a GM who understands the system well enough to make sure characters don’t become super-heroes.
Tunnels & Trolls by Flying Buffalo is another simple system like Savage Worlds and is fun to play. I haven’t checked out any of the recent editions, but I enjoyed it well enough 20 years ago.
Also the CODA System Lord of the Rings game from Decpiher is very good, if you can find copies of the rules (I don’t believe Decipher makes it any more).
Savage Worlds looks pretty good, with alot of setting support for several different setting type options. I find it odd that it’s adherants tend to be fanatics, who want to use SW for EVERYTHING, but it does seem to be a decent system.
Have you looked at Ars Magica? Old school Mages in a neat system. I can’t remember if the latest edition uses the same troupe style solution for characters or not, but it’s well worth checking out.
Another possibility is Reign, which is a fantasy version of the One Roll Engine(ORE). Free versions of ORE are available at http://www.nemesis-system.com/ - Reign is a Print on Demand, available from lulu.com.
There is of course also White Wolf’s Exalted, and you can always do the Vamp/Were/Mage/whatever in a dark ages style setting quite easily.
I’ll second Ars Magica - Historical Fantasy. Really played into my group’s SCA aspects but included all the fantasy elements as well. I learned a lot about 13th-16th century Europe playing that game and many lessons in how important simple things like trade, religion and maps are in a quasi fantasy world are. These aspects are still in my DnD game.
Loved the magic system with the spontaneous casting and playing multiple characters too.
Appart from D20, the only thing I’ve played is Shadowrun 4E. I love the character creation system for shadowrun, but I have a lot of problems with the gameplay. Namely, it takes forever to resolve anything that requires a dice test. Combat is particuarly long and arduous. I love how gritty combat can be if you play it right, but I hate how it takes ten minutes to resolve a round that in game-time is no more than twelve seconds (five-minutes if you know the system really well and don’t stop to look up any of the grotesquely over-detailed rules for every little combat action).
On the other hand, if you avoid combat as much as possible and focus on roleplyaing, the shadowrun is kind of fun.
Tried the D10 Call of Cthulhu. We didn’t know the system very well, though, so things were kind of rough and we never got around to playing it again. The system looks really good and if we got it down better, I think I’d probably prefer it to d20.
Also played Rifts, but while it had great flavor to it, ye gods! it was so ill-defined.
If you like more a more realistic approach to fantasy gaming, GURPS is good for that.
Combat is quite lethal but spells will still let you heal quickly.
Magic system is very different from d&d (3e or 4e).
What I really do love about the system is the ability to fully customize your character and the trade offs between disadvantages and advantages (the disadvantages grant you more character points to use on skills and advantages etc.)
Hoo! I want to look into that too. What was the system based on? Was it a d20, d%, or dice pool?
I think the dice pool is a flawed system really. That was what was part of why shadowrun takes forever to do anything, I think. It forces you to constatly rely on charts and tables, so you’re always looking things up, not to mention counting hits and misses.
If we could get a system that has the character creation style of shadowrun, but plays as smoothly as d20, or d%, I’ll be sold.
Gurps is similiar to ShadowRun 4e so it is more complicated than Shadowrun 3e, as far as character creation is concerned.
You get character creation points and then you buy your traits with those points. It is really a complex system of character creation, but once you get over the initial curve you will be fine.
edit: i forgot you were familiar with Shadowrun 4e, so you will probably like GURPS alot then.
What about BESM D20? With classes, races, feats, skills, and character points, it’s hard to think of anything other options that could be added to character creation. On the other hand, once you have your character, the mechanic is basic D20 with combat streamlined to mimic anime—the emphasis is on one-on-one attacks and combat maneuvers is de-emphasized.
GURPS uses 3d6 for resolving things like skill checks and combat actions. Damage is rolled with d6’s only.
The good part of GURPS is that the distribution of the dice (3d6 is “normally” distributed) makes small bonuses more valuable when your skill is 10 or so and less and less useful when the skill is higher. It can be argued that in some cases it is also a problem, but I don’t think so.
There is no dice pool in GURPS, just the 3d6 check (rolling low, below your skill, is good).
I am thinking of putting together a little survey for the local comic book shop to guage interest in different systems. I’m not sure if systems like Sovereign Stone and Ars Magica are still in print, or what systems are still in print.
Did anybody ever try the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game? I bought the original rulebook back in ‘91, but I only played it once at a con. I was the only one however, outside of the GM, who read the original Zelazny books.
Good luck looking.
