What are the greatest RPGs that you've ever played?

submitted by Otacon from self.RPG

Let's kick things off with a discussion. Of all the games you've played, what do you consider to be the greatest?

I'll throw my hat in for Shadowrun because I'm so fond of the setting, if nothing else.

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[–]Narratron 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Alright, I'm super excited to be here, and glad this is one of the first things I'm running into.

"Greatest" is a really broad umbrella which just means you've given me an excuse to be super wordy.

I cut my teeth on Shadowrun, and I still have a lot of affection for the background, but I haven't played for years. I'd love to try again though, depending on which rules were being used--my dream would be somebody putting together a Savage Worlds port that I liked, or completing my own.

My favorite system right now is Savage Worlds--I admit I kind of like generic systems, my prior favorite was GURPS and I still have a ton of GURPS books lying around--which isn't to say I think it can do anything... But it can pull of a surprising variety, usually without much work if you know what you're doing. It's pretty much the system I've been looking for my whole life, it 'ticks all my boxes' for how I think an RPG 'should' work.

That said, I have had an awful lot of fun with Feng Shui, too. Only ran FS2 for one short campaign, and it didn't work out as well as I would have liked, but my friends and I had lots of good times over the years with FS1, including one campaign that stranded the crew of the original Enterprise in the Netherworld.

Greatest overall, I'd have to go with Savage Worlds, it's just my favorite and I think it will be for a long time yet.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

RPGs don't exist, in that 'role playing' has very different roles and meaning in different games and contexts.

Pre2e D&D is a tabletop war game that includes role-playing as a strategic element. It's great at that. When it tries to be other things, it becomes inadequate or just wrong, and people should just play another game. If you want to spend all session writing backstory and getting into the character's headspace, if you want to be a superhero, just stop breaking D&D to try to make it what you want and play another game.

Old-style dungeon/hex crawl D&D is one of my favorite games, but you really won't find many people to play it correctly except old men who like John Tiller PC games.

Burning Wheel is a great RPG for allowing characters to really drive the story without making them superOP. It also doesn't care about gay feelz-based issues like 'balance'. However, for it to be any good, your players have to be people who could be a good dungeon master. The rules are complex, the game doesn't work right if you don't follow them, and it requires a lot of pro-active behavior on the part of players.

GURPS is awesome as a system, especially if you like crunchy real-worldy simulation style games. GURPS, however, is awful if you have a bunch of people who just want to make 700 point anime characters or have no ability to be creative. GURPS characters depend on a lot of limits set by GMs, and by intelligent investment by the player; when people try to make it the 'anything RPG' where people make 'whatever they want' it ends up a complete trash fest.

Basically, I want a game whose rules actually accomplish a certain set of tasks well, and I need players who have the IQ and tastes to properly utilize that system. I can enjoy just about any RPG with the right people, and the games I like the best usually entails players who are comfortable with logistics and math.