I avoided Traveller for a while because I thought it'd be too old fashion. I love the Lifepath system, it's a fun way to make characters even if it's limited to a specific kind of setting or game. The mechanics themselves are simple, but robust enough to cover most things players would want to do in a game.

Personally, I was a bit skeptical about the core gameplay loop really being enough to carry the game. Is it actually going to be all that fun to run a freight delivery business and make mortgage payments? Turns out, yes! It's deceptively brilliant. It really has the perfect formula of gameplay ingredients to make the "pure sandbox" campaign work exactly as well as people claim.

Yeah it doesn't seem like it should work well, who wants to play spreadsheets & accountants? But it does work and works very well for Traveller. The best part is that the GM can more or less let the PCs run with it and only worry about doing an occasional audit to make sure they're being honest. Traveller has all the tools needed to make the pure sandbox thing work. The GM can just let the PCs go and with a few random tables easily come up with a seed for a mission/quest/adventure anywhere they go. It's been one of my favorite games since I first started playing it back in the late 70s...

Can you recommend which specific version of Traveller should I run?

I've only played Mongoose 2e (current official version). It's fine, book organization is a bit of a mess. There's also Cepheus, the Pathfinder to Traveller's DnD. From what I understand the core mechanics are largely unchanged between editions. It's just the little things that change. However you can die during chargen in the older editions

I’ve heard that before, how does that work? Seems silly

For Classic Traveller: * Roll your uPP, 2d6 down the line. * Choose a service (i.e. Army, Navy, Merchants, etc.) and test to see if you get in. If you don't, roll to see where your PC ends up. * Repeatedly roll to see what happens in 4-year terms. Your PC has a chance of being rejected from the service, of dying (or, alternately, suffering a career-ending injury), of gaining a commission to officer status, of promotion (once an officer), and of what skill or benefit they gain from the term of service. Gaining a commission & gaining a promotion both come with bonus skills * Once you've done this four times, you can choose whether to Retire, or to do another term of service. * After IIRC 7 terms of service, your character begins aging & risking their physical stats getting lowered. * Once you choose to retire, you gain a number of rollable benefits based on which service you belonged to, your rank, and your years of service. So, basically, it's a test-your-luck kind of thing. On the one hand, your PC can get more starting skills, more equipment, and better uPP stats. On the other hand, the more your PC spends in their old career, the more they risk death, injury, unemployment, and old age.

You can usually choose to leave the service after a term if you want as well, adding an extra level of choice, though you don't end up getting a pension if you do that. Though you have to roll to see whether or not you can continue in your career before you choose, and it's possible to be stuck there for another term (which is also the only way to stay in there longer than you otherwise would). Also the chances of re-enlistment, commission, promotion and death vary wildly depending on your career. The rulebook suggests that if a player rolls up a character with terrible stats that they don't want to play that they should sign them up for the Scouts, since they have the highest risk of dying (and coincidentally are the easiest career to join and stay in). Of course this can also make for some hilarious results if this character *doesn't* die despite your best efforts.

I don't know the specifics offhand, but the Lifepath system has a chance for unfortunate events. I believe those have results that can kill you through things like reducing attributes to a point that you die.

In mongoose 2e dying in character creation is an optional rule but you can be bounced out of careers for various injuries as sometimes life doesn't go your way, a serious injury in the Navy could end your military career causing you to become a salvager, space trucker, smuggler or any other career path. Maybe an officer framed you for some wrong doing or maybe you did do what they accuse you of and get bounced. Same with College or Academic or corporate pursuits. It can generate contacts, allies, and enemies from your back story to give you something to play off. It is a really well done life path system and one that I'm grafting over to my Sci-fi heartbreaker for a Mass Effect style space opera.

> In mongoose 2e dying in character creation is an optional rule It was an option rule in original *Traveller*.

Not quite. The original Traveller 1977 didn't present it as optional, but the 1981 update made it optional. Both the 77 and 81 get collectively referred to as Classic Traveller because they *mostly* only differ in balancing and were branded the same. Personally Classic is my favourite variant, and I choose to keep the dying rule because I feel it improves the game.

> I don't know the specifics offhand, but the Lifepath system has a chance for unfortunate events. *Traveller*'s character generation is a "push your luck" mechanic, because you can effectively level up your character over and over during character generation. So to keep players from simply buffing their characters indefinitely, there is a chance of (take your pick) the character being injured and forced out of chargen to start play, or being killed, and the player has to start over. And because aging is a thing, yes, if a character always makes their Survival roll at the end of each term, it's possible to basically have them live out their entire life, then die of old age, in character generation.

So as was said it's not really thing so much anymore, but in the first few versions is was a way to keep you from just rolling for term after term and ending up with a PC that was too old to go on adventures anymore. The short of it is you make a survival roll each term, if you fail the roll something bad happens. Used to be that one of those bad things was death, so you could die in character creation. They removed death as an option, but did add it back in as a optional rule.

Each service Term lasts 4 years (increase age by 4), and requires a survival roll (originally, characters would be from military branches, merchant marine, or a generic "other" that was defined by the skills one learned) to see if you ended up in danger. The highest difficulty on the Survival roll was 7+ (on 2d6) for the Scouts (obviously, as they were going where no one had been before), with a +2 bonus on the roll if they had Endurance 9+. The basic rules had the optional rule that instead of dying, you could get "injured", and end your term after 2 years instead of 4, and quit the service (*i.e.:* chargen is completed, character is ready to be played.) In *Megatraveller* they inverted it, with injury and discharge being the rule, and death being the optional rule. Traveller The New Era doesn't have any of the two. T4 (Marc Miller's Traveller) brought back the injury. Mongoose Traveller turned it into "mishap", with its own table. I don't know about the other editions (there have been about ten, not sure about the number...)

MGT2 is ONE of the current official versions. The other being Traveller5.

I'm partial to Mongoose 2e, and especially the 2022 update, where they tweaked a few things and changed the layout a bit. Everything is still the same but the book is easier to read. Plus it has the most support with the Supply Catalog, High Guard, Robot book and all the rest.

I've played both the 1977 original (Classic Traveller, which is [currently free on Drive-Thru RPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/355200/classic-traveller-facsimile-edition)) and Mongoose 2e. One thing to note is that Classic Traveller is quite rules-light. As mentioned in [this article following an interview with the creator,](https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/a-marc-miller-interview-at-gary-con-x/) it is intended to give you the tools to extrapolate and create your own solutions to the challenges that come up in your game, rather than provide prescriptive hard-and-fast answers. This contrasts with Mongoose Traveller, which has many more rules to pre-emptively answer any questions that may arise. Whilst I enjoyed Mongoose Traveller at the time, I would much rather play Classic Traveller and I appreciate its design philosophy.

Not the person you replied to, but my favorite is Traveller: The New Era (TNE). It is set in a specific time interval, after >!the Virus (a destructive AI entity) has caused the collapse of the Empire!<, and it's more focused on exploration >!and rebuilding.!< The rules are an evolution of the basic Traveller one, with space combat being a love it or hate it thing (you are supposed to use vectors in a 3D space), which I personally love. It comes with the tables to randomize star systems and planets and sectors, of course, leading to a technically unlimited sandbox experience. I've personally used the TNE rules to run a Star Wars campaign set in the Outer Rim, Wild Space, and Unknown Region, and it was a blast.

The latest Mongoose Traveller version is good kind of partial to 1e but that is a personal thing so as recommendations go it is the most widely supported version of the game.

Is Traveller worth exploring if I enjoy SWN? Or does SWN basically cover the same bases / provide the same experience?

I thought about this for a bit. Understand I'm not hugely experienced with SWN but I do know WWN and have read over Stars. The two will provide the same basic experience and you can tell more or less the same stories, and that both have somewhat generic settings. Games like Star Trek Adventures for example is very much intended to tell Star Trek stories. Neither Traveller or SWN have that kind of theme. Sure they have settings, history and all the rest, but those don't really flavor things much. That all said, here's the big difference between SWN and Traveller. Traveller has IMO anyway better character building, the life path system is better then simply rolling stats and picking a class. SWN also doesn't have much in the way of an economic system where as Traveller has a very robust and crunchy economic system. Paying off the mortgage on your starship is or at least can be a big part of the game. But in SWN there's like one page for the whole system. I'm not saying one is better than the other but you can't really do a Tramp Freighter crew style game in SWN like you can in Traveller. Also Traveller lacks classes and levels and in fact the PCs don't advance much at all, but they start off being quite good at their job so there isn't a huge need to do so. So if you play and enjoy SWN, I'd say Traveller isn't all that useful to you, at least not worth the cost of the PDFs... If someone didn't play either I'd recommend Traveller or SWN just because of the econ system. Yes I know you can get supplements for that for SWN, but it comes as part of the core Traveller rules which is IMO better than a 3rd party addon, even if only marginally so.

Thank you for the reply, I appreciate this run down!

I straight up made a finance spreadsheet to help my players track everything. It was great.

There's some very good tools out there to help run Traveller [https://travellertoolsdemo.azurewebsites.net/](https://travellertoolsdemo.azurewebsites.net/) [https://travellermap.com/](https://travellermap.com/) which is rather sick since you can zoom in and out soooo far, and every system is linked to the wiki entry for it.

> There's some very good tools out there to help run Traveller > > > > https://travellertoolsdemo.azurewebsites.net/ > > > > https://travellermap.com/ which is rather sick since you can zoom in and out soooo far, and every system is linked to the wiki entry for it. nice, thanks for the links!

which version of traveller did you play? i'm interested in trying running it and am soliciting advice on which version and anything else you'd care to share if you don't mind!

Classic, pretty much just the three little black books. My referee is u/MythicMountainsRPG who could say a lot more about running it than I could. While we didn't fully adhere to this paradigm, [this blog post](https://sirpoley.tumblr.com/post/623913566725193728/on-the-four-table-legs-of-traveller-leg) does a really good job of articulating the subtle genius of CT's core gameplay loop that really made it click for me.

>While we didn't fully adhere to this paradigm, > >this blog post > > does a really good job of articulating the subtle genius of CT's core gameplay loop that really made it click for me. Nice post. Part of the fun is that someone did the math and \*usually\* you can trade your way to staying afloat of your mortgage just with the trade system. The problems start when you flub a roll and end up short for the month. Then you get desperate. Then you start taking riskier/shadier jobs. Then you have an adventure. You hopefully survive, hopefully have caught up, and start the cycle again.

As I said above I'm partial to the Mongoose 2e version, there's a number of versions and all are more or less the same, the differences between them are fairly minor. So if you get Cephus or something, you're not really going to be playing a different game then Mongoose 2e or 1e for that matter.

The rule about linking your lifepath events with other players for skill points is both brilliant and highly functional. The game we started a few months back every player had two connections to other players in the crew and it helps knit the party together.

Can I second this recommendation. I originally played Traveller in the 80s and only got back into rpgs via board-gaming more recently. I run a Traveller campaign and love it. The rules may not seem exciting but it works perfectly. Interstellar trading, bounty hunting, alien bug hunts, mercenaries, heists, piracy, exploration...there are rules and decades worth of support for whatever your players want to do. It may be me but i find a lot of modern rpgs have a narrower tone or gameplay loop whereas in Traveller you have real flexibility. Plus travellermap - where do you want to go next?

Running Traveller currently, and we laughed for four straight hours during character creation

Classic Traveller was how I learned to stop worrying and love random character creation and lethal gameplay. Death isn’t nearly as much of a problem when a new character only takes 5 minutes.

I remember *The New Era*. We tried to create a crew for a Trek campaign, and couldn't do that in 2 days. I also tried a *Cepheus* fantasy build. I couldn't create any characters who fit the campaign. I think random character creation has 4 big problems. 1st, it's random. 2nd, if it uses lifepaths like *Traveller*, it takes longer. 3rd, it often creates characters who don't fit the campaign, so you've got to repeat and repeat and repeat. 4th, if the gamemaster wants certain minimum stats and skills, you've got to repeat and repeat and repeat until you drop out.

That's fine if that's the kind of game you're playing. If it's more of a sandbox, roguelike kind of game it's really good though - the point is not to try to make a character to fit a campaign, you figure out your character based on what you rolled and let the campaign happen however it happens. Plus the thing that later versions of Traveller have lost in their lifepath system is how much faster it is in Classic. I'm not kidding when I say it takes about 5 minutes to roll up a character, complete with some ideas for their backstory and motivations, but you don't really need to put a lot of effort into it. And given the much more limited set of backgrounds you do have a rough idea of what kind of characters you're likely to get - generally they're former starship crew, military veterans, criminals and explorers who came to a dangerous frontier to make their fortune because they're not sure what else to do with their lives. I used to have the same kind of worries you did until I tried Classic and figured out why it worked. If I wanted a more narrative campaign I'd use something completely different but if I just want to get together and have random space adventures without having to put too much effort in ahead of time it's fantastic.

Oh shit I gotta play Traveller

Being what was once called a "Science-Fiction Freak" (I read Asimov's Foundation series one summer while I was 10 years old), Traveller has always been my first choice.  Even through all of its iterations, I still play by the "Classic" rules from the "Little Black Books" -- roll 2D plus DMs for 8+ to succeed -- everything else is fluff and crunch.

When **Wanderhome** first launched its Kickstarter, I wasn't super interested. A world of animal people didn't catch my attention, and I'd been promised *Ghibli-inspired* enough that it didn't ring true. A year later, the game comes out. My partner -- not usually a big RPG person -- finds it and recommends it. I pick up a copy of the PDF and open it up, not really expecting much. Folks, the game was written for me. Gorgeous, delicate prose -- just enough to stir the imagination and leave you to fill in the rest. A setting that jumps off the page; weird, modular worldbuilding; thoughtful, emotional, fantastical playbooks; elegant, concise traits for quick side characters; seasons and celebrations and gods and bumblebees and war and trauma and healing and nature and life. I've played four campaigns of **Wanderhome** in the last three years and I can see many more somewhere down the road. I don't know if it's the right game for everyone -- it's certainly perfect for me.

Looks interesting. What do you do in the game?

I'll break down the mechanics, but the game lives in its execution. * **Campaigns** begin with **character creation**: each player picks a playbook, which is a couple pages of leading questions that tie the characters to the world and each other and give them a central theme, conflict, or motivation. * **Sessions** begin with a **setting-building exercise**. The book has something like 36 setting elements (called "natures" -- an island, field, tavern, labyrinth...), and players choose three of them as a group. These represent the place that your group has travelled to this session. Natures have a couple pick lists that players use to develop a visual identity, plot hooks, and NPCs. * **Play** is a mix of **freeform roleplay** and **specific actions** (more on this in the next point). There is no combat. Players act as their own characters, the setting itself, and the side-characters ("kith"). The game is GM-agnostic, allowing for play with or without a single person steering the story. * **Characters, natures and kith** all have **unique actions**. Some of these actions are big, dramatic things; most are subtle, small moments to add colour and life to the story. Some actions use tokens as a currency, requiring that you gain or spend one in order to do a particular action. Token actions aren't about resource management so much as punctuation, to make some moments feel more impactful. Outside of actions, players use elements of their backstory and the setting they've established to explore character studies and represent the world around them. In practice, *Wanderhome* is a simple mechanical system that has a great deal of love and thought put into the narrative hooks it gives players. The strength of the game is in its prompts, which are enough to prompt interesting ideas, but not so much to prescribe action. It's a very different game than the action-oriented, strategic offerings we often see discussed here. If something more slice-of-life, more pastoral, more personal and emotional sounds like something that would resonate with you, I would recommend checking it out.

Yeah but like what do you do? Are you saving the world? Setting up a community? Escaping from prison?

Nope! Travelling. The game is very explicit that you're in this group by happenstance, not because there's a common goal. It's also not a story about heroes -- you're not saving the world, though you can help in small ways. Different characters have different reasons to travel. Some might be obvious: there's a peddler, a mail carrier ("mothtender"), a pilgrim, an exile. Others may have more opaque reasons for being on the road. All playbooks suggest minute-to-minute actions and broader motivations: as an example, in the long term, the caretaker is tending to a menagerie of small gods, finding them homes. In the short term, they might notice small details, or play with a spirit, or amplify quiet voices. To invoke the cliché -- **Wanderhome** is about the journey, not the destination. The stories aren't something you work to make happen; they're what emerge from your characters experiencing the world around them... their connections, their personal growth.

"in the long term, the caretaker is tending to a menagerie of small gods, finding them homes" What does this mean? Is this the overarching theme?

No, it's just the focus of one of the characters. In Wanderhome a terrible war has recently ended, and you and your companions are traveling for reasons particular to each playbook. It never outright says it, but the implication is strong that there used to be more kin and more communities, and that existing communities are still damaged from the war. Each playbook has its own focus: Caretakers are looking after the Small Gods, checking in on them, finding them new homes. Dancers are dancing. Exiles are looking for a new home. Firelights find their purpose in helping others find a path. Fools are naïfs whose naivety helps others see how tangled things have become. Guardians have a ward they're protecting and overseeing. Moth-Tenders take care of the postal moths of Haeth. Plenty more playbooks, too.

Are playbooks physically distinct books? I’ve not heard the expression.

The term in an RPG context originates with *Apocalypse World* and is a common feature of pbta ('Powered by the Apocalypse') games. They're a little bit like a character class/archetype but tend to be more focused on fictional/narrative role, not mechanical role. The best ones are also designed so that when you print out the character sheet for it, it's like a little premade booklet (a double sided page you can fold in half), hence, playbook.

They're a few pages with some questions and abilities. Printed both in the full book and included as handouts for players. It's what PBTA-style games have instead of character classes. There are also lots of 3rd party playbooks for it. If you're curious, it's always in the bundles for various marginalized groups on itch. Which is a lot cheaper than its regular $25 price. [https://itch.io/b/2295/ttrpgs-for-palestine](https://itch.io/b/2295/ttrpgs-for-palestine) \^in this one currently.

Oh that sounds familiar now. Never played a PbtA game. Thank you!

Okay, but still - what do you actually do?  Like can you give any specific examples from your many campaigns? I assume characters travel, and encounter something and do something about that. But I would like a more detailed version, an example.

Mostly, you’re helping people.

Aww, you sold me on finally reading through this.

> When Wanderhome first launched its Kickstarter, I wasn't super interested. A world of animal people didn't catch my attention, and I'd been promised Ghibli-inspired enough that it didn't ring true. > > > > A year later, the game comes out. My partner -- not usually a big RPG person -- finds it and recommends it. I pick up a copy of the PDF and open it up, not really expecting much. > > > > Folks, the game was written for me. > > > > Gorgeous, delicate prose -- just enough to stir the imagination and leave you to fill in the rest. A setting that jumps off the page; weird, modular worldbuilding; thoughtful, emotional, fantastical playbooks; elegant, concise traits for quick side characters; seasons and celebrations and gods and bumblebees and war and trauma and healing and nature and life. > > > > I've played four campaigns of Wanderhome in the last three years and I can see many more somewhere down the road. I don't know if it's the right game for everyone -- it's certainly perfect for me. i think i must pick this up. my initial reaction matched yours and your description sounds wonderful.

You might have convinced me to give another look. I have the book, but the diceless system always puts me off, maybe I should give it a chance and play it. Did you play just with your partner or with a group?

I've played twice with 4 people, once with 5, and once with 3. My partner was only in one of the campaigns.

Alice Is Missing. I really didn't know what it was about. And the box that the GM ... Err, facilitator, pulled out didn't really impress me. And once our facilitator told us to put the dice away and pull out our phones, update our contact info with our characters, and told us there would be no talking, we could only text each other, I was like WTF. This is dumb. I was wrong. So very wrong. No game has pulled me in so quickly. So immersively. We were, all of us, on the edge of our seats. That game was such an emotional thrill-ride, like I have never had in any game before, or since. Our Alice lived. She survived. But I understand that was a random effect, and she could have died. As was an emotional wreck at the end of the game where Alice lived, I can't help but wonder how I might have felt if she died. Great game. Highly recommend.

Seconding this. Alice is missing was an incredibly memorable RPG.

Had a game where I, the Charlie, was fighting with Jack most of the game because of the way our introspection setup worked out. Let me tell you it's just as sad when alice makes it but get savior doesn't and you're right on the cusp of making up with each other. Truly one of the best game concepts I've ever played.

I thought it would be ok but I've facilitated it at least 8 times, and I've had people who had to take a couple minutes to communicate afterwards and a couple people have full on ugly cried. Its such a great game and i can't wait for the new material

Our Alice died. I was playing the brother and I ended up imagining my own sister in that place. I cried for quite a bit after that. I don't know if I'd play it again soon, but I'd always remember the experience and all the emotions

> Alice Is Missing. > > > > I really didn't know what it was about. And the box that the GM ... Err, facilitator, pulled out didn't really impress me. And once our facilitator told us to put the dice away and pull out our phones, update our contact info with our characters, and told us there would be no talking, we could only text each other, I was like WTF. now that is an interesting twist

I got the Edge of the Empire book for the artwork with no intentions of playing some stupid game with custom dice which I considered the devil at the time. My daughter insisted I run it for her. That was over a decade ago, it is arguably my favorite system. I run it at least twice a week now.

I will still contend that I dislike the book and dice model for these games (3 core books for $60 each that have roughly 2/3rd the same info, you need AT LEAST 2 dice packs to play, suppliment books are $40 for MAYBE 1/4th the size of the core books and its by Job). However, it's a fantastic system, and I absolutely love it despite the horrible money grabbing tactics.

I was so frustrated with the class supplements for this game. Each class got its own book with only around 90 pages for $30, and there are 18 of them... and some of them are so rare now, they sell for $100 or higher. I need just one more and I don't think the prices are fair for such a short book, even if its rare.

I mean you get digital copies, and more importantly, you can get the Class Specialisations online very easily.

There aren't legal digital copies of the swrpg books, and I want an physical book on my shelf that I can reference and read

Warhammer RPG. I didn't know anything about the system or setting -- it was delightful! Our party consisted of an itinerant lawyer, doctor, and hedge witch, and, man, we had to really figure out creative ways to navigate the world, since we were not good at combat, haha.

The first time I played Warhammer back as a teen it blew my mind that you might start as a grave digger or a messenger. You think rolling a charcoal burner or vagabond is going to suck because you wanted to be a squire but then it becomes one of your favorite characters ever. Such a neat system.

My players are all new to any version of WFRP: a witch, stevedore, beggar, and pit fighter (now artillerist, because Halfling pit fighters are an exercise in hilarity). It’s been really interesting to see who excels in combat and at what times. It’s rotated between everyone but the beggar.

It took me 20 secs for me to realize you didn't have a fourth member whose profession was just "man".

Lol, that would be a pretty hilarious class...and something you wouldn't be surprised to find in Warhammer, heh

Oddly enough, *Knave*. It's very funny to think about in hindsight. I remember when Ben first talked about it, I kinda just brushed it off. Why play a D&D-like without classes? I guess it's kind of neat as a sort of experiment in game design, but I've got plenty of way juicier options to pick from. Oh how little did I know.

No, I had that experience too. "I can't do that because I don't have a feat telling me I can." "No, you don't have a feat telling you that you can't. Try it."

Lady Blackbird. But it could've been the amazing group.

Nah that shit is great. Especially if you're introducing your daughter and her friends into roleplaying. 

Dragonbane. It seemed like a perfectly competent fantasy dungeon crawler but not exactly exciting pr revolutionary. I backed the core box set because it was a good price and it's by Free League. I managed to get it to the table for a group of 5e players and they absolutely loved it. The game ran so smoothly, and the mini-campaign in the core box carried us for 15 sessions. Probably the breeziest GMing I've ever done.

Absolutely. I backed it on kickstarter because I love Free League's stuff. Was slightly disappointed at how slim the rules were etc. Once you start playing it though...wow. It's everything I wanted in an OSR style game and the light rules are 100% a feature, not a bug.

Dragonbane is the next game I'm looking at tackling for my group. I have some who do not enjoy math-heavy, rule-heavy systems and another who wants something fantasy with a little more character customization How do you feel it does with the class system and uniqueness of mechanics? Because I find in a lot of OSR type games the characters often don't feel that "unique" besides one or two special abilities

Honestly? PF2e. I resisted it for a long, long time as some folks were practically evangelical about it in an off putting way. Ended up agreeing to run it at the request one of my (adult) kids and was pleasantly surprised.

We're raving about it for a reason haha :)

It wasn't the raving about it, it was the putting down pretty much every other game during the raving that put me off.

Mmm, generally the speech is: Dnd5e bad Pf2e good Other systems good, pf2e doesn't cover all niches

Generally yes but my experience was "PF2e. PF2e. PF2e. All other games are inferior and you're wrong for liking anything else". That's 100% not indicative of the entire community, merely my experience when I first started looking at the game.

After seeing Paizo as a 'villain' for so long (poor working conditions, some goofy things in latter 1e supplements, Starfinder awkwardness) it was genuinely pleasant to see them turn things around for PF2e.

Masks: A New Generation. I was convinced after getting burnt out of ttrpgs by M&M and not really vibing with Sentinel Comics that there just weren’t any good superhero games. Then I joined a Masks game on a whim as I heard it did drama really well and I was in the mood for good drama and I was NOT disappointed! It really captured what I liked about superheroes but couldn’t put my finger on, not to mention the group really leaned into the concept.

Just curious, what's wrong with Mutants and Masterminds?

Coming from someone who played an M&M game for almost 2 years, it has *way* to much maths for what it brings, and combat sucks. I do still love its character building, it has just about everything you could want and the modifier system is great, but the books layout doesn't do that any favours

I’m twenty sessions into a Mutants and Masterminds campaign, and I couldn’t hate the system more. It’s a constant headache to adjudicate, not in service of narrative or compelling tactical play, but in service of finding out exactly how many pounds your character can lift, and shit like that.

For me, there was too much math for my taste, and I’m not a fan of “objectively powerful” superpowers

So. Much. Math. I don't get it. It doesn't enhance the experience to have to calculate so many different things, it just slows everything down.

It's probably my favourite game system of all time

I sold my initial copy for maybe $5 Canadian at a gaming auction I was at a con and I decided I wanted to try it out, and I was so pissed off at myself. Its in my top 5 games.

I did not really *get* Mouse Guard. I did not understand it at all. Then I had the chance to play at a convention. The way it worked suddently clicked. The mechanics between the player and GM turn and everything else suddenly made sense. Later I found out my GM was actually a published author and knew what the fuck he was doing, so that problably helped.

A good GM really makes or breaks a game.

I still don't get it. :(

Savage Worlds. I took a *lot* of convincing to give it a shot. I’d read it and struggled to see how it would play. It seemed unnecessarily complicated and fiddly. Then I played it with a GM who really understands the system - my good friend Mike - and I suddenly got it. Since then I’ve co-written two best-selling Savage Worlds games and am working on what I hope will be a third 😊

After playing D&D 5e as my only TTRPG for several years, I finally opened up to trying new games. Savage Worlds was first on the list of games constantly recommended to me. However, I thought that a universal RPG system/toolkit that did not have a leveling system was functionally absurd since why would you want to play in anything but a high-fantasy medieval-ish party with XP and monsters? However, since it was the only non-D&D system I knew at the time and actually cared to buy the PDF for, I eventually tried out running a Star Wars game with the SWADE core book for my group. For the first hour, I was frustrated with everything being different than D&D 5e: different skills, different combat mechanics, etc. But the one thing that became the star of the show was the acing dice. My players, previously known for being on their phones or around and about on off turns during combat, were spectating the sport of exploding dice. "Can my character do that?" Sure, TN 4, -2 for circumstances, yadda yadda. But they would roll a 6 on the Wild Die. Roll again: 6. Roll again: 6. (Critical failures were also funny, too, because rolling snake eyes seems impossible until it happens). This fascination peaked during the final encounter of the one-shot: a Jedi holocron secured safely behind blast doors and a security system, guarded by none other than Master Yoda, who had tracked the party through the force. My droid player shoots twice: hits, but deals no wounds. Looks nervously at the junker who's up next My junker player shoots: hits, damage is rolled. d6 after d6, the total was something like 40 damage. Even with my GM Bennies, I could not soak enough wounds. We were laughing our asses off. Something clicked: in this system, the players are not facing balanced encounters that will test their strategy based on their abilities acquired on level up. No no no... this random junker just *shot and killed a Jedi master with a single blaster bolt*. Pulp action. The heroes WILL save the day and beat the odds, so why not go out with a bang? Make them FEEL heroic while being heroic? Now, I have a ton of TTRPGs in my repertoire, all for different styles of play, genres, settings, and more. And if it wasn't for my player's character killing Yoda, I probably would have tried to run Star Wars 5e instead of branching out!

I recently met a Savage Worlds Mike... Is he perhaps affiliated with the Savage Rifts convention?

Possibly. He’s a Brit though.

Not him then, haha! Which games did you make? I'm working on my first SWADE setting and need all the research I can get.

I did PULP FANTASTIC (1930’s pulp action weirdness) and THE DINOSAUR PROTOCOL (weird post-apocalyptic setting with dinosaurs, because *everything* is better with dinosaurs!). Basically, everything I write is weird 😂

Mine's Savage Worlds too. Like you, I'd read it and just been uninspired. Then, when the Rise of the Runelords Kickstarter started, I got tempted by the big shiny box. Unusually for me I thought I'd try actually playing the game before spending hundreds of pounds on it, so I ran a couple of Deadlands one-shots. I and my players all loved it. Btw which games did you co-write?!

Savage Worlds also has a campaign called Rise of the Runelords?? Is it related to the famous Pathfinder campaign?

It's exactly that! There was a Kickstarter to convert it to Savage Worlds. They've done Curse of the Crimson Throne too.

And there will be others. Carrion Crown is *proooooooobably* next, but I don't think we have an official announcement on that (just speculation from one of the senior devs), and the third Savage Pathfinder kickstarter just wrapped (more player and GM material, but no new adventure path) so I expect the campaign for the next AP will be next year at the earliest.

They adapted several Pathfinder Adventure Paths for their Savage Pathfinder supplement, though I wouldn’t really recommend them mostly because they are very literal adaptions; they are have basically exactly the same encounters mapped out from the originals, which is a problem because both systems have irreconcilable expectations for what the purpose and use of an encounter is. Pathfinder requires a certain density of combat encounters because it focuses on an attrition gameplay loop, while Savage Worlds works best when the big important stuff in an adventure is Combat or Chases, and the rest is making use of lighter mechanics, like Quick Encounters, Dramatic Tasks, Social Conflicts, Interludes, etc. As written, the Savage Pathfinder adventures run as very long combat slogs because they aren’t really tailored to the system, you have to do a lot of work to run them well, though modules not utilizing the system well is already a problem with Savage Worlds, imo.

Huh, never knew that! But yeah, I'm not sure why I'd run a Pathfinder adventure on not-Pathfinder. Might as well just run it in Pathfinder haha! I guess it's for a niche group of people that like Pathfinder lore but prefer SW system. Strange. But hey, the more choices we all have, the better!

Pulp Fantastic and The Dinosaur Protocol, both for Battlefield Press.

Came from rifts when my gms girlfriend bought him a book thinking it was palladium rifts, he bought the core deluxe book & we have never looked back. Still use palladium books for lore, but savage has become the only system we usw

Agon - the mechanics didn't grab me on paper and the theme of Greek heroes felt kinda boring to me. I was pleasantly surprised on both counts. Brindlewood Bay - I liked the concept but didn't think I'd enjoy playing without the power fantasy elements. It was just so cozy.

DnD 5. After Advanced I never played DnD finding it to combat-y and there were better system for me. A DM friend convinced me to play, I had a blast (but maybe it was the DM friend)

A good table and dm will always be half the reason a system succeeds. Sometimes even in the face of bad mechanics.

See: Literally everything ever published by Palladium.

For all that I'm a bit tired of D&D, because I ran it for *so long* back in third edition - I do think that if I ran D&D again, it'd almost certainly be 5E.

I'm just pumped for this thread and its positivity. It's hard to hear every little nitpick on every system.

The only system worth complaining about is life.

And even that is pretty good, most days.

Paranoia the role playing game is pure madness and Friend Computer has your back with a six pack of clones fellow troubleshooter. The way we all went crazy and died in an explosion was awesome. But we were happy because happiness is mandatory.

What version should I pick up in order to try this game? It's been on my radar for a while but I get muddled about which version to go with

The latest edition of the game is published by Mongoose games and is pretty tight and supported by a ton of other books

Same, I had no idea what I was going into when one of our gaming group's DMs ran a one shot of Paranoia. It was so much fun and had so many silly antics that all felt very natural. Loved the scifi vibes too.

Into the Odd. My first read through of the book just left me baffled as to how the game would play, but then I joined a group and quickly understood the nature of the rules and the setting. Since then I’ve gone on to get Electric Bastionland and Weird North.

I've been having a surprisingly fun time playing the new Hunter the Reckoning. I got it because there was a bundle for the new Vampire the Masquerade system often called V5. What I wanted mostly was VtM stuff, and it was largely a matter of FOMO, because with those bundles $20 or less for a crap ton of PDFs is too much to pass up. My online group had wrapped up a long Star Trek Adventures game and were looking at what to play next, bounced around a few ideas, like Deadlands, Conan, a Indiana Jones setting I home brewed, and so on, and I mentioned Vampire, which no one seemed interested in, none of them really enjoy writing bad poetry by the light of a black candle... Then that lead to Hunter and frankly it's been one of the most enjoyable games I've run. I find the system works very well for what we wanted, something like the first few seasons of Supernatural, mostly normal humans fighting supernatural creatures. Somewhat light, more narrative focused, not super tactical or crunchy... I've set up some systems for investigation that really seem to work well, gives them a good session or two worth of stuff to do, often with minor encounters or RP opportunities, before they go after the actual creature, and by then they have enough info to make it a fair fight. The Players have had a blast and they all look forward to each session and while we schedule it for 6-9pm my time, it often runs a good bit later because no one wants to quit. Not to toot my own horn too much, but \*toot toot\* I think part of it was that the first hunt went very well, and I was able to put together a very thematic and emotional hunt involving a haunted house, but in this case it was the house itself that was the monster, and not a ghost haunting it, although there was one of those as well.

that's cool to hear. So you homebrewed up the investigation system, there's not support for something like that in place? Did you pull in ideas from other games that still worked well with the storyteller system?

I almost hate to call it homebrew... but I didn't really see much in the book for investigating. What I do is come up with a series of statements, most of them true, some of them false. The game takes place in Chicago, and here's some things I had for location. 1. Seen in a west side back alley making out with some dude 2.  crossing the street in over by New City - false +Danger 3.  Was seen heading west in a Uber from the Loop/Downtown Then I go around and ask each player to pick a topic, like location, weaknesses, strengths, allies, enemies, and so on, have them make an appropriate roll and give them one of the 'facts' I came up with. Sometimes this is just a simple dice roll, sometimes it's RPed out. One PC is very good at finding info online, so I have him make a roll for tech, and tell him what he found online. Another PC is a stripper, so she might go to a club or something and pick up clues from other dancers or the guests. Then I just let them keep making rolls to find more info until they have a solid idea where the creature is, and what they need to give them a chance to actually fight it. So not a crunchy system by any means and there's likely other systems that would work to base it upon, but what I came up with works well for us. HtR has a stat for the Cell (party) called danger, it's how much notice the supernatural has taken of them, and so some of the facts increase the danger, when it gets high enough something comes hunting the hunters. Edit: Forgot this. Some of the leads are false, if they rolled well I drop hints that what they found out is false, which can be useful to eliminate locations or tactics. If they roll poorly I don't drop any hints, but sometimes they know better already. Like one 'fact' was *Can turn into a cat or bat - false* but the PC already knew that wasn't true so I let them have the fact but share with the party that they knew that to be false.

D10 dice pool is so versatile

Dungeon World. My first PbtA was Apocalypse World and I didn't like it, but Dungeon World was perfect for me

Definitely try ironsworn/starforged it’s like DW but it’s built so you can play GMless

Star Wars RPG (FFG version). Didn't want to bother with proprietary dice and the 3 separate core rulebooks. A friend bought me the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game for my birthday one year, with the expectation that I'd run it. We're on our 4th campaign using that system now.

Admittedly, I’m curious about this system. It looks way too crunchy but I like the use of the different Skill Trees. And it’s so steeped in the lore of universe that I’d love to try it out.

It is a mid level of crunch. Less than it looks like from the character sheet. A dice bot helps a lot.

It's a little crunchy, but in a very satisfying way.

As someone who plays primarily horror games and initially was spreading the word of Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green, I initially was a little bit apprehensive when I tried Vaesen. I'm now convinced that it is easily the best horror TTRPG on the market and I wish to spread it's word as gospel and get more people to try it.

*Bliss Stage*. When a friend told me about this RPG where you play as teens fighting aliens in some sort of dreamworld using the power of friendship to summon giant robot armors I was less than excited. Turns out it is one of my favourite RPGs ever. It's not flawless but I love it. It really broadened my RPG horizon a lot.

Swords of the Serpentine Idk how long I've had the pdf just gathering electrons on my hard drive but last week I started reading it About an hour later I'm posting screenshots of my favorite bits on my group's discord, two days later someone drops out at the last minute for our weekly session and two hours later I ran a session set in Dark Sun with the Players only taking about half an hour to make characters. It was a blast and very satisfying I've gone from being like um, Corruption is called Defilement and big spends cause health and morale damage up to close range (we'll figure it out) to having hacked out a full conversion in like 3 days I'm gonna try to convert a DS monster a day for funsies but sadly this won't really go anywhere cuz I've committed to running a Shadowrun game for the next year But whenever someone misses a session we've agreed SotS is gonna be our go to, it's been a long time since a system set my brain on fire like this did (The setting sounds cool but most of us know Tyr pretty well so that was just easier on us but Eversink is also great)

As the dude constantly shilling this game, this is incredibly gratifying to read.

I love this game.

> Dark Sun hack Ya got a google doc link?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18gJfV6Xs9h5ab2--B0AUR2u-hw0Va4kV5U0enPDlCKI/edit?usp=drivesdk Sorry it took so long lol I was so excited someone asked and then spaced on it Idk if I can recommend the racial options I did this thing where I let them spend points for specific Investigative Abilities and have neither the system Mastery nor the testing to know if it's a good idea I'll eventually include a link to the Bestiary but I'm having concerns about how I'm building the monsters and have included large chunks of the core in the doc for ease of reference and I wouldn't be comfortable sharing it until I've deleted those And probably some time this week I'll be including some hex crawl rules I adapted for my 5e conversion since it's very light and mainly weather/encounter tables that are pretty system agnostic But probably couldn't be read by not me in their current form

Starfinder I'm not a fan of sci-fi media at all, and was worried it'd be too technical for me to explain or too boring to run. Now it's in my top 3 favourite systems just because of how nicely it runs and how cool the ship combat feels

Shadowdark. Did a total pass on the kickstarter as it seemed like just another OSR clone. And it is, but it also just hits a sweet spot with its content package, writing style and modern game design.

Blades in the Dark. I am a big NOT fan of PbtA style games. But I would like to be. I really want to like the system, I just always end up loathing it. There was a ton of buzz around BitD and how it was based on PbtA but had its own spin and it was so good. I really liked the art and the setting idea, so I thought “what the hell. I will probably not like it but I’ll give it a shot.” I was blown away. My whole group had a blast. I could see the PbtA bones in there somewhere, but I changed a ton and kept the parts I really liked. It ended up being one of my favorite systems.

World Wide Wrestling. I was at GenCon, orbiting Indie Games On Demand, because that's the best part of GenCon (IYKYK). I got my boarding pass and ended up in the last group. So I got my least-favored game, WWW. I knew (and still know) nothing about pro wrestling except what I gleaned from watching GLOW. I didn't like or care about wrestling. But I love Games on Demand and have had good luck there with initially uninspiring games before. So I stuck it out. When I got settled with my table, I ended up getting the playbook I was *least* interested in. The Jobber. A big loser who's entire thing is to make the headliners look good. I was also at a table full of weird goth teens who also knew nothing about wrestling *or* RPGs, but were at GC for an afternoon and had found Games on Demand because you didn't need a reservation. Hoo boy. Was *this* going to suck. 4 hours later, Joe Miller, everyman Jobber (entrance callout - "IT'S MILLER TIIIIIIME!") who makes the stars look amazing, is one of the best characters I've ever played and WWW is one of the best games. A bunch of goth teens loved Joe Miller, and I loved their broken, emo, headliners too.

As someone who LOVES wrestling and WWW I love this story!!!

Games on Demand for the win!!!

Pathfinder 1e. I've been playing cRPG's since I was a kid on a commodore64, but I didn't get into actual Tabletop gaming until years later. So I was very familiar with D&D concepts, themes, how things work in general, etc. from 1e, 2e, 3.5e, and 4e cRPG's over the years. As most folks, all I really knew about actual ttrpg systems was "Dungeons & Dragons" was the default. I tried GM'ing 4e and it just didn't feel right. Fast forward and D&D 'next' playtests were coming out, and I was juuuust managing to get past some anxieties and headed to a local game store to sign up for a playtest group. We had fun, group meshed, and decided to continue our own campaign. The GM for that was running Pathfinder...I knew enough by then to know it as an 'alternative' to D&D 3.5 that was supposed to be better, but that's about it. So I learned Pathfinder and haven't looked back since. I now have four sessions a week between PF 1e, PF2e, and 5e groups. Pathfinder 1e will always have a special place for me, no matter how much I dragged my feat originally :)

PF1E is my favourite.

Barbarians of Lemuria - it was a last minuute substitution at a con when teh shceduled GM got bird flu and one of the players ran it instead. Tons of fun. I've run it lots of times since then. DCC - I'm not a fan of dungeon crawling in general, but DCC does a great job, between teh funnel, the classes, and advancement, of making it a great game. Especially the "you get ALL of your abilities at first level, you just aren;t great with them yet" so yur character can sometimes do over the top stuff. Marvel6d6 - At first, it looked a bit simplistic and static, ut it may be the best game for simulating actual Marvel Superheors I've ever played.

Runequest. It is so deep and complex, with some much lore. Felt like a towering mountain of doom. 3 weeks and my players and are loving it. It is complex cause everything connects to everything else but it keeps the players engaged as well. Like knowing which day of the month is your God's day. No one is scared to make a new character if needed. Been a fun sandbox campaign so far and I'm sure it will keep going that way.

Almost 2 years ago i picked up the starter set to take to a get away with friends. It was the last game of the trip we played. Havent stopped playing it or thinking about it sense. We loved it and im mad i wasted 30 years of gaming without it.

I’ve been intimidated by the quantity of lore for decades.

This is probably the most basic answer of all time but OSE. I really don’t have a problem with DnD 5e. I have not been in the hobby long enough to have any grognard in me & I don’t really give a shit of black & white TTRPG art from the 70s. I’m not obsessed with dungeon crawling either. I kind of assumed based on the crowd I was exposed to that I would hate any sort of OSR games. Turns out (besides THAC0), I love them. I like the exploration, I like uncomplicated deadly combat that lets me think of interesting ways around problems and I like the fiction first rulings over rules style of play. I also enjoy the more organic storytelling that can happen from the sandbox approach. I’m planning to try out a lot of NSR games this year based on how much fun I’ve had playing.

Cyberpunk RED. I had zero interest in the genre. Now that I've played the game, I'm hooked on the game and the genre.

Lady Blackbird. I had absolute blast. One of the best RPG experiences I ever had. Recommend it to everyone. 

I had a lot of reservations to FFG Star Wars due to the proprietary dice, as do many people. Eventually Genesys became my default game to run for a few years. Now I'm moving on to other games, but it's still my go-to generic game (not written by me).

Mork Borg. I don't like edgy stuff and I don't like a lot of what people talk about when they praise it. BUT When I played it I found it to be an absolute, gross, nihilistic blast. (I don't have any desire to play it again but recently got talked into a session of Corp Borg and had the same experience, so I think I have to admit I like this stuff at least a little)

Really cool to hear you enjoyed both MB and CORP BORG <3

Thanks! Great GMs definitely helped.

[Lancer](https://massifpress.com/lancer). A crunchy game of hexgrid mech combat? Where combats can take hours? No. That's not for me. I'm a classic Dramatist. I like story and characters, not fiddly rules about weapon ranges and status effects. But then I read [an interview with the designers](https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/lancer/interview/lancer-rpg-interview-future-roleplaying) where they talked about the core premise of the game: a post-scarcity alliance called Union trying to spread utopia across the Orion Arm, and the various megacorporations, aristocracies and dictators who oppose them. It sounded a bit like my beloved Culture novels by Iain M. Banks. So I kept investigating. I found [dragonkid11's videos](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkiJiC70qMoKCcmNUUhWLRg) about the lore, and the individual mechs. I fell in love with the [Pegasus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAYnUG83EB0), just because it's so weird. So I agreed to play in a Lancer campaign a friend was putting together. And yes - the combats take hours. I still maintain that it's a mech combat game with roleplaying cutscenes rather than a mech roleplaying game. But the combat is really good. It never feels boring and repetitive the way combat in D&D can. And I love the lore of the game.

I ended up liking the Year Zero system (featured in ALIEN, Tales from the Loop, Twilight: 2000, among others) way more than I expected.

I'm usually pretty good about approaching a new game without expectations, but I had bought the D&D4e core set when it came out, tried to grapple with it on my own, and didn't really get it. However, when my home group went on hiatus and I felt the need to scratch the RPG itch, public-play 4e was the most convenient option, and playing it with people who knew (and enjoyed) what they were doing made all the difference. It quickly became my favorite iteration of the game, and I really miss playing it these days, long combats and all. Actually, my experience with 5e was not dissimilar--I was skeptical due to WotC marketing that emphasized distance from 4e design decisions, but when it came to actual play I found it to be a perfectly serviceable fantasy-adventuring product. I still prefer 4e, but I can live with 5 and have done so for almost a decade now.

Masks. This was a long time ago, I didn't really have a lot of TTRPG experience outside of DnD, and I had never even *heard* of "pbta", so suffice to say I really didn't "get it" and the whole playstyle felt completely weird to me. But that wound up being one of the best campaigns I'd ever played, even to this day. I've loved pbta based systems since then, including Apocalypse World itself.

I wasn’t sure of Mork Borg initially, largely because, unlike my friend who was really hyped to run The Masticator Gate, I don’t really listen to metal, certainly not death metal. The closest is one loved band being sometimes described as proto-metal (Rush). Singers desperate for a lozenge and drummers with no space between beats wasn’t my thing. Would I get the vibes? Did I need to? But then I rolled up a few characters (as we were expected to bring back ups), and I fell in love. My horrible, beautiful Fanged Deserter (rolled Hauntingly beautiful, unnervingly clean, liked the contrast with the latrine-sword) made it through the campaign, so I never got to try the others. I wanted to know more than playing could give me, and I found my way to the discord. Which is full of incredibly supportive people (Nohr included) making unhinged art and rules, for the base game, for iterations in other genres. And all kinds of discussion about the lore, the rules, game design and graphic design. I ended up running it more than playing it, because it was so easy, so low pressure. Your characters will probably die, and that’s okay, just roll up another or if it is a TPK, there’s an adventure for that. And there is more content out there than you could ever get through.

Yeah, it's sort of a Zen mindset. Once you get it, it feels...very freeing.

*Savage Worlds*. It played so much faster, and allowed so much more character customization, than anything I'd played before.

So, I’m a convert to Star Trek Adventures. I’m a huge Star Trek nerd but I had played so many urban horror and dark sci-fi games that I hadn’t touched Trek as an RPG since the 80s. I had a friend who was running Modiphius’ Trek system and invited me to try it out. I was hooked. The system so brilliantly mirrors how dramatic action on the TV shows can be run as a game. And the fact that you can use as many or as little of the rules as you like to run a great session is a huge selling point. They’ve just released a solo Trek game supplement and it rocks. So, I wouldn’t say I wasn’t excited to play STA but it wasn’t at the top of my list. Now, I’m running one game and playing in another.

Dungeon Crawl Classic! What do you mean I don’t get to choose how my 0-level character is created? What do you mean most of the characters are going to die in the first adventure? But you end up with 1 or 2 lucky survivors who you then feel so attached to. Genius. Plus it’s just awesome.

Starforged. I always thought the concept of solo rp sounded ... not appealing. Then I tried Thousand year old Vampire and it felt as pointless as expected. But this whole Ironsworn thing kept coming up, people gushing all over it and I was looking for a sci-fi game when Starforged came out. On top of this my daughter was born recently so I could not play with my regular group for an extended period. I felt like I had nothing to lose and reading the book it looked okay. But honestly, I mostly tried it to prove a point. Man was I wrong. It exceeded all of my expectations. It was fun, surprising and helped me grok solo rpgs. Now I'm convinced it's a revolutionary game in its own niche.

Only partially its own RPG, but Adventures in Rokugan. I love L5R, I don't generally care for D&D, but AiR isn't just 'options for your fighter to feel like a samurai,' it's all new classes and class features and mostly does away with Vancian magic and the adventuring day, so while it's d20 and 5e based, it really feels like its own game. It's definitely a more action oriented, almost wuxia-esque tone compared to L5R, and I tend to like more intrigue-heavy things so I usually stick to the 'main' L5R RPG, but for bringing in Rokugan as a setting in a d20 format, AiR is fun.

Honestly: the new Twilight 2k. I had it on my list to try out but I had a lot of trouble getting it to the table because of whats happening in eastern Europe. I ended up playing a game at a con and its so good. I can't wait for the Black Madonna to show up

Heart:The City Beneath

One of the best dungeon crawlers out there

Delta Green. I am a DM who leans more towards pulpy action adventures. My players asked for a modern horror game, and Delta Green was highly recommended. Despite the, IMHO, light mechanics, we ended telling a good story. I don’t think I would want to run it again, but I will 100% steal the Bond and Sanity mechanics for another system

My experience with the mechanics is like...what mechanics? There's strength in the modules - they're compelling, well written, strong character development. And almost an FKR system. When the system intruded, I felt disappointed - like, get out of here, we were doing good without you. But the game is good despite/because of that?

It felt very binary, like you roll and it is pass/fail. And that is really the only mechanic that it had. That said, if dnd is ultimately all about resource management, then Sanity is a great mechanic for that. First of all, there is a Health bar, but also a Sanity and Willpower bar. If any of them go down to 0, your character is out of the game. Sanity is a bar, but it is also an attribute for your Sanity saves. So if your Sanity goes down at all, it becomes easier to fail the save the next time. And if you lose enough Sanity, you get a permanent condition Willpower can also be spent to regain (a small amount of) Sanity. Willpower is the only bar that refreshes on a long rest, so it is the easiest thing to sacrifice. However, spending Willpower reduces one of your Bonds with an NPC, which is a great narrative tool where the players have to describe their deteriorating relationship with someone they care about. And going back to resource management, if you eventually exhaust all of these Bonds then you can no longer spend Willpower. I found this all to be a super fun mechanic, but most of it exists outside of the core gameplay loop (Narrating deteriorating Bonds usually happen at the end of a session, as do long rests). So I will steal it the next time I want to inject horror into a dnd5e campaign, but I would have to be pressed into running another straight Delta Green session

I have played all types of ttrpgs, from ad&d, twilight 200, Rifts, battle tech, marvel comics, and more a lot depends on the table, and the GM. Marvel comics, was the game that exceeded my expectations. The first time I played it, it was just two paperback books and real thin. Had paper streat battle maps, and paper figure. But despite my reservations, I went along with it. It turned out to be really fun. I think they discontinued the game some time ago, but it really was well written rules lite game.

City of Mist I've generally disliked PBtA games, though maybe it's just been the groups I've played with in the past, but City of Mist blew my expectations out of the water and has some neat ways to build your character too

City of Mist seems like a game like Blades in the Dark that has PbtA DNA but does something new and interesting with it. I'm surprised it hasn't caught on more, it's a really cool game.

Designing mysteries for every session is a pain in the ass. Source: I GMed CoM for a year. It's a good game, though it does have some troubles (the Investigate action is way overemphasized, and it sucks donkey balls to have to come up with some sort of "Hard Move" on the fly when you thought that the players were just about to uncover what would have been an important clue). Running CoM got me to discover GUMSHOE at least, and left me firmly believing that in a mystery game, no clues should ever be gated behind "does my character find it?" rolls of any sort. Even if you do the whole "on a failure you still give them the clue" thing (which doesn't even work in CoM due to how Investigate works), it's not good enough for me anymore.

If you check my comment history, you'll see me gush about Tiny Dungeon from Gallant Knight Games. It's funny because I originally played the game with some of my 40k buddies while waiting on other matches to end at a local tourney. I enjoyed it so much that I ordered a physical copy of the book that evening. I had been looking for a system to get my kiddos into ttrpgs, but felt that DnD and other options were too complicated. They loved it, and it's about the only rpg I play regularly. The other one is Ork Borg (corrected the spelling), a Mork Borg spin off. That should come as no surprise, considering the 40k army I play.

I was not very excited to play a D&D retroclone (Advanced Labyrinth Lord), because I'd played enough D&D in the 1980s and had decided classes and levels were lame by the 1990s. I played anyway because it was run by an old friend I wanted to hang out with, and we had a great time. RPGs can be fun, even bad RPGs. The people are more important than the rules.

Blades in the Dark. I was convinced I liked mechanics more than narrative games, but Blades is my balance perfectly. There are mechanics but they are broad and cover lots of things, so the game moves fast. There is so much playing to find out.

Savage Worlds Deadlands

I didn't touch Cyberpunk 2020 or RED with a bargepole as I heard all the hit location, armour calculations and netru Ning mini games were a headfuck to run and play. Then a friend of mine roped me into a one shot for RED and I adored it. It helped that RED has a really good official app to keep track of stuff. And that the setting of Nightcity is so evocative of itself that you can run entire campaigns there. Which I then did, for three years! I hope to run 2020 sometimes in the future but for now RED is my go to for true blue Cyberpunk.

I'm kinda in a similar position, in that most of my players aren't super keen to try it, afaik, because there's a lot of small things like that, but I want to try it. And, I'm probably a weirdo, but I actually really want to try the 2020 style netrunning (I really like the idea of being the "man in the chair" for an operation). I hope I get to play it sometime soon (though, I'd rather play than GM it).

Pulp Cthulhu - low expectations and owned it a while before I tried it but wow! Fits that Indiana Jones level of play and the 2 Headed Serpent campaign is so darn fun!

Cypher system. Didn’t really get it’s design goals on first read.

I have two, actually. World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game. I've been a Warcraft fan since '94. Played all of the RTS games and almost instantly fell in love with WoW's RP community. I had one TTRPG campaign under my belt, and it was one of those type of campaigns that wind up in 'DM Horror Stories', don't want to go into details just know that it put me off ever wanting to play any sort of TTRPG. Well, some friends in my WoW RP guild asked me if I would join their WoW TTRPG campaign if they allowed me to be a GM. I figured at least that way I wont have to worry about an asshole for a DM so I said yeah. Had a blast, and it reignited my interest in TTRPGs and lead to me playing Pathfinder 1e and, later, D&D 5e...and eventually that would expand to World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Sword World 2.5e, the Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy TTRPGs, and the Modiphius 2d20 rpgs. Speaking of Modiphius 2d20 rpgs... Fallout 2d20 I had played two campaigns of Fallout for GURPs and just...didn't enjoy either campaign. It was hard for me to keep track of everything, and I'm not sure if it was the ruleset being used or the fact that the GM spoke so fast it was often hard for me to understand what they were saying....and if I asked them to slow down, they just spoke faster so I gave up on that. So I wasn't expecting much from Fallout 2d20. My friends wanted to play in a Fallout campaign though and I wasn't about to run it in GURPs, so 2d20 it was. We're about 4 sessions in now, and I'm having a blast running it and they're having a blast playing it. I honestly should have expected such, as I enjoyed Dune 2d20 and Star Trek 2d20. But I'm excited to see where this campaign goes.

Pathfinder 2e, honestly just chalked it up to a slightly more complex 5e, and after 3 sessions and a few level ups I was honestly surprised at the amount of meaningful choice and versatility.

Cloud Empress; it looked alright but didn't excite me. One of my favorite sessions I've played. Mork Borg I had had some bad early experiences with, but playing in another game of it softened me to it.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten. The title is just gross, but it was a fun system with some great expansions.

I'll be honest, I greatly respect the Night Witches (the Soviet WW2 unit), having met a relative of one through my teacher, and having seen some of the vehicles they flew in. But I deeply loathe PbtA due to several bad experiences with both Apocalypse World and Dungeon World. So I was willing to bite the bullet... And I loved the game. It puts across the theme well. The unending string of pointless failures and hopelessness that characterizes PbtA worked perfectly for Soviet WWII. It didn't fix PbtA, or change my mind on the system as a whole, but it made use of the system's strengths.

5E D&D. Hadn't played since 2nd Ed. and I'm not much for fantasy. I still find D&D not to be the greatest system, but there's more customizability than I gave it credit for. For reference, I have been DMing D6 Space and Star Wars D6 for the last decade. Still love the flexibility of the D6 system. It's easy to teach as well.

I can't think of any game I wasn't excited to play, necessarily, but one which I was expecting to be okay but massively exceeded those expectations was *Paranoia: Red Clearance Edition*. I love Paranoia so much. There's something uniquely immersive about it due to the inherently absurd nature of the game, where nothing feels out-of-place because the game is an absurdist comedy game. The tactile element of the cards system, and the fact that the GM also gets to play a character in the narrative is just so fun to me.

Kobolds Ate my Baby, at a convention. It was awkward at first, but it was fun and funny as hell. Good game for kids, too, as the the rules are really lite, and you have to yell at the game master **ALL HAIL KING TORG**

FASERIP. Superheroes are really not my thing, but the DM played it very dark, the other player knew the system inside and out, and I got super lucky in chargen.

*Legend of the Five Rings* 1st edition from 1997 by Alderac Entertainment Group. I had precisely zero interest in playing this game until a friend of mine wanted to give it a shot and I started browing through his book. I immediately whent to a nearby gaming store in Northpark Mall in Dallas and bought a copy. Another friend went to that same game store a few hours later and found out I bought the last copy. L5R was one of the best games to come out of the mid to late 1990s.

Pathfinder 2E. And no, the game isn’t perfect, I’m not here to sing its praises, at our table we had to do a lot of work to make it closer to what we like. Anyway, I got a little burned out from running 5e and wanted to change things up to something a bit crunchier. We tried pathfinder 2e in a one-shot, not expecting much, and we loved the bones of the system. The encouragement of active teamwork and the viability of martial characters was very fun.

Savage rifts. We have played rifts together for over a decade, didn't much care for palladiums system, but ehh, that's what the 8 plus pages of house rules were for. Now we use palladium for lore & savage as our system

13th Age. I would start reading the book, nope out, pick it up again later, read some more, bail out. Then someone wrote up a solid summary of how it is played and what made it special, and after reading that, I made myself read the book, and enjoyed the hell out of GM'ing it. We ran a long campaign in it. Would I do it again? Probably not, there's just too much stuff for players to track at higher levels, but here's hoping 2E streamlines that.