What is your favorite pen and paper gaming system?

[Reverend Love]

What is your favorite gaming system and why?

I voted for Shadowrun. I love the entire fantasy/cyberpunk setting. It also contains in my opinion one the greatest rule sets and integration of magic and technology to be found. Plus for nerd stuff, it's a manly feeling to have two huge handfuls of six-sided dice when your tearing face off...very machismo.

EDIT

I know, there's a lot not listed. If your favorite is missing just reply with why I should have remembered since it's the greatest system of all time.

 

[Gizmo]

I love the White Wolf settings, but their flagship game 'Vampire: The Masquerade' is easily one of the worst in the series.

I love the eco-pagan/shamanism of the Werewolf game, but even that is topped by the mind-altering Mage: The Ascension. If you aren't even going to ever play it, you should still read the book at least once because it makes you see the world in a different way.

Mage: The Ascenscion is my favourite to play.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse is my favourite to run.

Star Wars is a hoot.

 

[Reverend Love]

I've heard Mage is an amazing system actually with great fluff (storyline, background, etc) .I knew I was forgetting some.

Isn't the premise of the game is that your a mage, belonging to a group of conspiring magi. Who's goal it is to keep the public at large oblivious to the reality that magic does in fact exist? The example I heard was you couldn’t walk around streets throwing fireballs without getting unwanted attention. However a revolver that curiously never requires reloading is ok.

 

[Gizmo]

Originally posted by Reverend Love
I've heard Mage is an amazing system actually with great fluff (storyline, background, etc) .I knew I was forgetting some.

Isn't the premise of the game is that your a mage, belonging to a group of conspiring magi. Who's goal it is to keep the public at large oblivious to the reality that magic does in fact exist? The example I heard was you couldn’t walk around streets throwing fireballs without getting unwanted attention. However a revolver that curiously never requires reloading is ok.

Yeah that's roughly right. Reality is subjective and so the fact that the vast majority of people think magic is impossible makes your life difficult. If you throw a fireball then the fabric of reality gives you a slap around the head, because thats impossible (in the game it's called Paradox, and it HURTS)... but if there was a spark in a gasmain... or maybe a loose paving slab that would trip somebody up...

It makes you think creatively about what reality is and how it works because each Mage has his paradigm for how he understands reality. And also as you play it you have to think laterally to solve problems because your magic has to somehow seem possible to the observer. Also, typical starter-level Mages dont actually have access to many powerful effects, they have to be subtle and cunning.

But you're not trying to keep the public unawares, if anything you're trying to slowly win them round to the idea that magic is possible. It's a battle between the technocracy (who want to fix things in place and advance humanity as a whole by making machines that anybody can use, theyre scientists) and the traditions (who are magicians and want the world to be undefined so they can mess with it more and work towards each person individually improving himself).

 

[Spiderman]

I like the good 'ol D&D series and the latest 3.x system. It really has cleaned it up and made it easier and more intuitive with the d20 system.

But of course the old Basic/Expert system will always have a special place in my heart

 

[DarthFerret]

I like the White Wolf game series as well. Vampire seemed to be lacking (or maybe it was our story teller), and I never played Rage, but we did a game with a combination of all White Wolf games (The way I feel it should be played) and I chose to use the Changeling series. It was incredible. Of course, the Pooka was my kind of character.

But, I have to go With Spidey overall. I love D&D 3.x and still play it as often as I can. My group is creating thier own world, and similar to DragonLance, our current games are becoming the background history/Legends/Temples, etc.

We recently just finished up a large campaign, in which my Cleric/Wizzard/True Necromancer (of WeeJas) created a large temple in a mountain, within which there is a colony of Mephits, and a Green Dragon that despite its typical alignment is devoted to WeeJas (plus is a lover to my character now). [Thinking of making a half-dragon offspring to run in a game ]

Sorry for the dissertation, but I love this new world we are making!

 

[Chaos Turtle]

Well I votde for D&D 3.x, but I really would have voted for "d20" as that's the system on which it is based. I like the system as a whole, and enjoy several games based on that design (Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu, et al).

 

[V.L.Sigma]

i've only played D&D, but I've been dying to try White Wolf's new game, Exalted. I have the books and everything, I just need players (and a campaign ). So, D&D 3x has my vote for this one.

 

[Ferret]

I've always loved AD&D first (Gamma World was a close second). I'm talking about the books that were published in the early to mid 80's that only cost about $15 each ($18 for the DMG) and you didn't have to take a second mortgage out on your house to buy the new books that kept coming out (and the box sets, and the softback supplements, and the...you get the idea.) Sure, it wasn't as streamlined as the D20 versions, but it was SIMPLE, and fun. If there were any rules that didn't make sense, then it was up to the players and DM's to figure them out - not some huge multi-national company that thought that you couldn't think for yourself.

-Ferret

"...best module: Ravenloft..."

 

[Chaos Turtle]

No way, best module was Castle Greyhawk. Kind of the Unglued of AD&D.

"He's dead, djinn..."

 

[Ferret]

Castle Greyhawk had some good parts, but a lot of them were just too silly to be taken seriously - I know, I know that was the whole idea. But, it wasn't consistent. If they had one author for all of the levels of it, I would have liked it more...

-Ferret

"...my best friend (and usual DM) created some classic Silly Dungeons"

 

[Chaos Turtle]

Yeah, you're right.

How about the Slavers' Stockade series?

 

[Reverend Love]

Don't forget Dark Sun. That was a great module as well. Tons of fluff.

I played Gamma World once. It was actually pretty dang good. The best was the HUGE tables they had for rolling up random characters. I remember I got a mutant weed that could hover, was immune to 3 physical attacks of my choosing, immune to psychic attack, regenerated and had a death aura. It was the most broken randomly rolled character I've ever had...the GM banned him He was the technologist class, or whatever they called it.

My buddy rolled up a Bat Enforcer…pretty funny.

 

[jorael]

I played Vampire too short to really know it. So I voted D&D 3.X

I played this with 4 friends who never played a RPG in their life. Try that with AD&D.....

Great character customizing, intuitive rules and the whole D20 idea generated a lot of books to use (too much perhaps, and not everything is worthwhile).

 

[Ferret]

Originally posted by jorael
I played Vampire too short to really know it. So I voted D&D 3.X

I played this with 4 friends who never played a RPG in their life. Try that with AD&D.....

Great character customizing, intuitive rules and the whole D20 idea generated a lot of books to use (too much perhaps, and not everything is worthwhile).

A couple months ago I played a 3.5 game w/ one guy that had been playing for about six months (limited knowledge) and two guys that had only played a couple times before. The newbies picked up on things pretty darned fast and were a force to be reconed with. Of course, my Ranger was everyone's favourite psycho because he would use the dirtiest, sneakiest tricks against our opponents (caltrops at the top of a flight of stairs followed by burning oil at the bottom works wonders on small trolls). However, our DM was incredible. He has so many books that there was no way I could predict what he was going to do - I guess he had to do that since he knew that I knew the basic books back to front...

-Ferret

"...not that I don't like 3.5 - I just prefer 1st ed..."

 

[Chaos Turtle]

Dark Sun (the campaign world) was great stuff indeed. I ripped off -- er, "modified" -- so much of that stuff for my own campaign. Just as I am planning to do with Eberron very soon. (By the way, if anyone would like to recommend some nice d20 supplemental material -- other than WotC-published; I know all about that stauff -- please do so.)

I hated Vampire, too. I tried it with 2 different groups and... well, the clunkiness of the game was actually the least of my issues. The people were weird, man!