Lets kick this community off with some of the good stuff. I’ll go first:
- Stars without Number - The first of many Kevin Crawford games I love, it’s got excellent mechanics that can be easily extracted from the lore for homebrew purposes, but the lore is still pretty cool too.
- Godbound - Probably the most absurd-in-scope RPG i’ve ever run. Turns out that when your players are heroes of steel in a world of glass you can teach them valuable lessons about the unintended consequences of taking the easy way out.
- Star Wars FFG - Hard to run at first, it still has a certain appeal to me for the way it handles success and failure.
- Lancer: Crunchy mechs and a strategy layer that’s quite fun to play. The non-combat stuff is relatively freeform too which encourages RP.
- Mutants and Masterminds - Last but not least, M&M comes with some caveats: Superheros are so much fun to make. Sure it takes a couple hours, but conceptualizing and building these characters mechanically is actually a ton of fun (protip: use herolab classic to build, its muuuuuuuch easier) The GM guide has some really solid advice on running hero stories of gold, silver, iron, and four color genres. What’s more, the mechanics encourage acting like a comic book hero, so players /want/ to save the civilians even if the bad guy escapes because the game rewards them for it!
I could talk a lot more about these games, but this post is already looking pretty long. Tell me about some of your experiences and favorites!
Star Wars D6 - For history most of the Star Wars canon pre episode 1 was created by WEG for this game. The D6 system is really suited for the Star Wars spirit, and was at the time one of the most approachable space opera RPG. I have run Star Wars FFG, which hold it well, and I think I still prefer the D6 system.
FATE, because this system really is flexible. I have homebrewed a couple of campaigns in two different genres.
When I was younger I ran RuneQuest because I found it better than AD&D. The Basic Role Playing system is a great system, RQ level of detail is quite the opposite of Call of Cthulhu. The combat is very crunchy and very lethal: it didn’t abstract the defense with an Armor Class (THAC0 at the time), but rather you’d dodge / parry, the damage could be absorbed by the armor per location (you rolled it) and a crit would just ignore the armor. The initiative was based on the weapon (with a spear you hit before than with a dagger). Also what I like in the BRP (works in CoC) is the experience system. Use a skill, you learn from it.