What are your three to five favorite game system?

Rules:

• Freeform games aren't applicable. Homebrew systems are; if they have a basis of mechanics that can explained in yours (even is reductive or "basics").
  
• Any printed system that has rules beyond GM fiat ("Diplomacy" or "Free Description") is fair.
  
• If you you're lukewarm about systems, try to find the positive.
  
• If you don't like systems much, of no longer like a a system, but used to, let us know how you felt when you liked systems. Skip the negative that got you out of them. Outgrowing them is not negative, for this purpose. Nor is not having a group, nor having family and/nor job that eliminates the meeting the demand of a system.
  
• Talk about the what you like! Just don't dog on others favorites.
  
• Three systems is not necessary, but would be a minimum. Limit it to five at maximum.
  
• Edit: Settings you like, even if you don't adhere strictly to the system attached, are good mentions. If you use a transplant or revision, as seen below, mention that with this invitation.

I'll start next I post, but just not yet. Made this post eating dinner and need to do dishes. Then get to my games I GM, but I'll add my favorites next I post.
This message was last edited by the user at 14:01, Sat 05 Aug 2023.

1) GURPS and GURPS using it's optional rules. (ie, "GURPS is a toolkit" or "Powered by Gurps")

I've been playing Gurps since the 90s, and it just fits like a glove at this point. I'm in the middle of working up adaptations of some other RPGs, old and new, to Lite 4e, just for fun. (I may end up running them here, I may not, I dunno, but the stuff I'm looking at includes Boot Hill/ GURPS Old West, Gangbusters/ GURPS Cops/Mysteries, and- the one I'm working on now- Fallout.)

2) D&D 5e: It's easy to get running and has a large audience right now. I can knock out a character in about a minute, and get playing fast. People know what it is, you don't have to explain or set up much.)

I also like how adaptable the system seems to be, because I've seen a LOT of other games use the game engine but a different set of assumptions. (There are adaptations of the LoTR RPG, Symbaroum, Dark Souls, Oz, Hellboy, Doctor Who, and a bunch of other ones, plus some really interesting original takes like Brancalonia or Five Torches Down)

3) PbTA (more for the settings, rather than being amazed by the system itself.)

Seriously, here's some PbTA settings: Alas for the Awful Sea (Mystery and Crime, 1800s Britain), Public Access (horror, along the lines of certain 'found footage' YT channels),  Monster of the Week (Fighting monsters while you, yourself are monstrous), Brindlewood Bay (imagine Lovecraftian Murder She Wrote), Dungeon World, Apocalypse World, Flying Circus, Pasión de las Pasiones (Telenovelas), City of Mist, World Wide Wrestling (backstage drama and in-ring action), Monsterhearts, Spirit of '77 (one of the best times I've had on RPoL was this one), Epyllion (a Dragon Epic, in which you're one of the dragons)... The list is really long, and has some amazing ideas.

4) Dramasystem (You don't see enough of it, for my tastes, but I'm always happy to see it.)
    I love this system. It makes settings that might otherwise seem ungameable, not only gameable, but really fun to play in. (Rather than do another list, I'll link you to one: https://medium.com/@jcubertafo...pitches-6d9863837f02 )

5) Hero System, 5th Edition.

I never cottoned onto 6th or that Champions Now! thing, but I've been playing HERO since I was a kid, and (even more than GURPS) it's sort of my gaming "native language". It's a bit fiddly for narrative-gaming expectations, but I love how flexible it is, and the support the gameline had is just the sort of stuff I prefer.

Runners up: Along the lines of PbTA, I like Fate's Worlds much more than I like the system itself. I can use the old-school Storyteller system without much problem. There are also some retro games (FASERIP Marvel, for instance) that I will always show up for.

Other than that, there are a lot of games I like for the setting much more than I enjoy the system itself.
This message was last edited by the user at 11:44, Sat 05 Aug 2023.

Thanks! I'm trying to get inspiration for new game systems to play, and this started to make me go "huh...yeah that sounds cool!". Games on RPoL are hard to find GMs for, so that I'm only a GM currently, or in games that are inactive. Each system has some usual players, and I like a lot of them, and some have mutual aversion and some like me and me not so much their style, and vice versa. All in all, I see the same crowds, and I enjoy that; but breaking into new systems lets me experience new cliches or cultures of gaming.

I'm going to post here myself, with my own list, later. I'm very glad even if not another post is made here, to have had some great ideas. So thank you! I love the RPoL community as a whole. I seldom, "never" as hyperbole, go onto forums or reddit for gaming discussion, not even to just read, but I really like the rules, even when I break them and have to learn why they're in place, that make discussion and discourse easy to read. I really like that when I go onto the web, RPoL is the only site that I use that's not super big; i.e. Youtube, or financials; ands I feel socially heard and respected, and get to hear people's enthusiasm for why they're here. I'm a systems guy. I do, however, want to say I appreciate the nuanced and ever so slight diversion with your mention of settings that really draw you in first. That's a really big oversight on my part, and I think you bring up a good point, that I'd like to ratify the rules on slightly.

Even if the system isn't the major draw, that the setting helps inspire you (those here) to game, whether with the system as is, or with transplant, or revision. That's a new provision I'd like to welcome here.

When I first started gaming, way back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, there wasnt a dedicated game store in my local area so dedicated RPGs like D&D weren't available. However the local book shops were starting to sell the latest craze called Fighting Fantasy gambooks or Choose Your Adventure in small format paperback. This is how I got my first and second favourite RPGs of all time.

Top Three

Dragon Warriors - This came as a series of three books and I presume my local bookstore had mistaken them for FF Gamebooks. Fortunately for me, so did my parents when they bought these for me as a gift without reading the cover blurb.
The system is relatively simple and by modern standards rather limited (though some of the mechanics like armour bypass were quite novel). There were originally no class, racial or background skills or modifiers and no skills or specialisations at all. It made for quick and easy character creation, if somewhat inflexible.

Tunnels and Trolls - Its fast, its fun, it doesnt take itself seriously (The basic first level Zap-the-enemy spell is called Take That, You Fiend! ) The rules are possibly even simpler than Dragon Warriors and though most GMs will houserule around some of its quirks, it can descend into absurdity at higher levels - especially before the introduction of the WIZ stat and magic users had to use their Strength score as their mana pool (Gandalf could have just one-punched the Balrog all the way back to Valinor under these rules).
Buy D6's in bulk and repurpose a paddling pool as your dice tray.

GURPS - Sometimes I like to spend days tweaking a character down to elbow pointiness, fingernail hardness and Skill:Blow Nose, and of all the skill based systems I use GURPS is the one that does that with the least downsides so going by the OriginalPosters rules this fits in at number 3. Big pro is that its Universal and has a wealth of splatbooks for settings.

Honourable mentions

Savage Worlds - I'm in to rules lite systems these days and when I had a character ready 20 minutes after first picking up the rulebook I was pretty happy. The fact the book (Explorers Edition at the time) cost £6 new was another big point in its favour. I've not played it enough to properly add it to my top 5 though.

Cyberpunk 2020 - I absolutely LOVE playing, writing and gaming in the Cyberpunk genre. The game system, not quite so much. CP2020 was the first system I got my hands on with a Skill list and the sort of crunch I'd come to love, then hate, then become indifferent to over the years. Though the combat boasts of being highly realistic, but while having the character you've spent a week building die to an unlucky die roll in a random firefight might be real, it's also really not fun. The netrunning rules might have been okay, but I've never met anybody who used them in any game because it just doesnt fit with group play. And the rule/kludge to deter your character from loading up with cyberwear has always been a massive bugbear of mine.
On the upside, the Lifepath idea was brilliant and is a lifesaver when you're creating a character background and your creativity runs dry.
I've seen a little of Cyberpunk Red (aka Cyberpunk v4, there was no Cyberpunk v3 it was a bad dream now lets never mention it or its black and white GI Joe artwork ever again)..where was I? Oh yes CP Red seems to have fixed a number of the bugs, most notably Netrunners appear to be a viable character choice now. Unfortunately Cyberpunk games in general are rare beasts online and those that do appear are usually quickly filled so I've not been able to try CP Red as a player yet.

Car Wars - It's more a boardgame than an RPG, but I love the idea and I've run games set in its world using other RPG systems. GURPS have/had a splatbook for the system called GURPS Autoduel and the car design was done using GURPS Vehicles, but being a car nerd these were never quite accurate enough for my liking. Efforts to create my own vehicle design rules met with qualified success ; Yes, I had come up with ways to calculate speed and acceleration for a given vehicle that was pretty accurate, but it required calculating cube roots and required a scientific calculator which I felt wasnt reasonable for a game.

I'm really giddy that the choose your own adventure series...I forget the name...but I think it's Lone Wolf...is, in the entirety, at my local public library system. That's a really good gateway, I share with you; those choose your own adventure type books.. I think that was a great mention, and I feel is in spirit with the thread.

Need to get my own list together, but I'm enjoying reading what's being written too much ATM. I need to give GURPS a try, as it's a toolbox system. Great recommendations ATM!
This message was last edited by the user at 15:45, Sat 05 Aug 2023.

Oh yes the Lone Wolf series was hot on the heels of the SteveJackson/Ian Livingstone Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, I have the first tweleve on my bookshelf.
You may want to check out https://www.projectaon.org for more LoneWolf goodness.

♫ Rockin!

1) 4th Edition D&D. I started playing D&D in the late 80s with the Mentzer Red Box, and 4th Edition fulfills for me every promise held in that Larry Elmore cover art.
2) Games that are Powered by the Apocalypse. I don't like all of them, nor is anyone meant to, but I like the overall premise enough to want to play more of them. Right now, I'd most prefer Dungeon World, Avatar Legends, and Monster of the Week.
3) Fate. Another system I like the premise of but have neither played nor run it enough to really get a bead on.

This list is heavily influenced by settings.  I dislike freeform but so long as a framework existed to be fair I was happy to play.  I often took settings from one game and used it with a different ruleset.


1) Warhammer Fantasy 1e
My first rulebook I ever had.  The setting heavily influenced every campaign I ever ran.  The dark world full of corruption and rot stoked my fancy and hrlped me define NPC motivations.  Combat and spellcasting were to be avoided unless you had advantage and could live with the consequences. The rules were ok but I never got to play it.


2) Runequest 1e
Owned the rules and ran my first cmpaign in it.  I had no references to Glorantha so I ran the world of Warhammer Fantasy and modelled gameplay like the world of Conan but with more rivers and canals. Some of the players were familiar with Call of Cthulhu and I borrowed their books and implemented Sanity checks.


3) Ad&d 2e
The RPGA came to my neighbourhood with the Living City campaign.  Four hour time slots and a different cast of players each time plus I got to play.  I became more social and travelled from convention to convention.
Heck they gave me a shared room for free if I ran half the slots and I played those modules I ran first.  This was the first campaign, but others followedwith the RPGA - Virtul Seattle (Shadowrun 1e) and Masque of the Red Death.  The campaign 6I most wanted to play was 4Living Esrthdawn but it only ran in Florida.


4) Earthdawn 1e
I loved playing Earthdawn.  Abstract rules for social defence and the fight against horrors suited me.  The story tie-ins to Shadowrun made  the background and the implementation of lrgrnd points and improving magic items and abilities made sense to me.


5) Vampire LARP
Oh, how I wish this existed when I started adulthood.  Who knew women actually gamed and wanted to look their best doing it?  I was already happily married with two young children but my wife and I each took one evening off every two weeks.  My night was spent socializing with people who found me interesting.  The emails and offline influence kept me sane