Just trying to start a conversation and see what people are interested in. Nothing special about the categories - add anything you want to talk about.
Favorites limited to ones I’ve played.
Overall: Fallen by Perplexing Ruins. Love the setting, atmosphere and mechanics. I have some quibbles about healing in the default rules but want the Fear mechanic in everything. It’s great for both groups and solo.
Combat: Lancer by Massif Pres
Solo: Broken Shores by BlackOath Entertainment. I haven’t managed to keep a PC alive for longer than an in-game week, but it’s awesome. Runner-up is Riftbreakers, also by BlackOath. Much less deadly and more heroic. Also the best run-a-group-solo that I’ve seen.
Magic system: Path of the Aram Thyr by BlackOath, again. Another solo, and I’m not a fan of the game-play loop, as written, but that is easily fixed by making your own narrative/PC goals. And the magic system is so cool.
Supplement: Lots here, but from what I’ve used in games is a tie between Into the Cess & Citadel and Into the Wyrd and Wild, both by Feral Indie.
I’ve got a large TBR/TBP pile, so a couple of things I’m very excited about: Across a Thousand Dead Worlds (BlackOath), Salvage Union (Leyline) and Goblinville (Narrative Dynamics). The current top of the TBP is Pirate Borg, Runecairn and WWN.
Apocalypse World 2nd Ed. has given me the most delight in the fewest sessions of any TTRPG. It takes a group willing to follow the rules though. If you try to play it the way you play D&D it won’t work so keep that in mind.
With Apocalypse World, I haven’t had a single bad session. They’ve all been interesting and hilarious. On the other hand, I’ve had all sorts of awful experiences with many other TTRPGs…
I can’t wait for a new edition to come out!
I’ve only played and run D&D 5e. I did get the Pathfinder 2e humble bundle so might play that at some point. My party also owns two copies of the Call of Cthulu starter set which I would love to get around to one Halloween.
For small stuff we’ve played Honey Heist which was a huge amount of fun!
No interest in 5e. My group did the PF2e started set. Not bad. I enjoyed playing an alchemist bomber. Less fun with a rogue mastermind. I did set up a Honey Heist one-shot for our group on an evening that the regular GM was busy, but too many people had to pull out that we never did it. It does look like a lot of fun.
Pathfinder 2e and even Pathfinder 1e are both great. Kind of prefer the d20 system overall, but dislike 5e (lack of options is my biggest beef with it, as well as small modifiers in general).
I’ve also enjoyed Mage the Awakening from what little I’ve played of it.
I personally really love the Fate system - it’s much more hackable than other systems, so if a part doesn’t work for you, you can usually tweak/remove it, and it sells “system toolkits” which essentially are homebrew guides.
Overall, I find most heavy systems tend to put a crazy amount of focus on combat, which skews stories into pigeon-holing combat whenever possible. Most players I run for tend to view combat as a last-resort, so it’s hard to find heavy systems that match their playstyle.
I’ve been running and playing the Avalon Hill edition of RuneQuest III (with a few necessary modifications and with supplemental rules from Basic Roleplaying for other genres) for nearly 40 years now. I also play in a game which is theoretically D&D, but in reality is mostly theatre of the mind in which we occasionally roll a D20 to meet a number set by the DM.
I’ve run a short adventure of three sessions for Call of Cthulhu, and so far is my favorite. Also, I want to expand on The One Ring 2e. I’ve run an introductory one shot and I was impressed about the flow and brutallity of the game, and I really liked it!
First of all, the two sets of rules I mentioned are available in German only
So my current favorite system is Aborea, it has a wonderful mix between simplicity and freedom.
When it comes to even more freedom, I’m writing ButterflyAspect for that right now
I’m discovering and start playing to coriolis (Free League) very nice setting
Oh I didn’t expect to see Fallen here when I opened this! I feel like it’s really underrated. I’ve only played it solo, but I use the Fallen oracle cards for everything.
Overall: Maybe I’ll cheat and say ItO systems in general. I like how hackable they are; you learn one and you can play a lot in different settings.
Combat: 13th Age. I was always a big fan of 4E, except for some issues like combat length: 13th Age really solves those.
PbtA: The original Apocalypse world is still my favourite.
PbtA alternative: Heart: the City Beneath. In some ways it’s a classic dungeon crawler, except it really isn’t. Every part of it is so evocative and unique and cool. I love that everyone is doomed.
Along those lines, Corvid Court is based on the same system as Heart and it seems like nobody has heard of it but I’ve had a wide range of different groups of people love it.
GMless: I haven’t played a lot of GMless games, but of the ones I’ve played, I really liked The Price of Coal.
Overall writing: Book of Gaub. This could basically be a set of short stories and be equally great.
Pathfinder 2e, Ironsworn and started getting into Dungeon World.
Cortex Prime is easily my favorite these days. It really can do everything well and is made to be hacked. Though I’m playing Dragonbane solo right now and finding it to be really good within its niche.
I am running a Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle using V5 rules for a couple of years now. I tried a few other things but I keep returning to that because I like the setting, the easy rules and that it does not emphasise rolling dice. I tried Changeling: The Lost but while I really liked the rule book I had trouble writing a chronicle, I might revisit it in the future.
I have run and played so many different systems, but I’ve really settled on the Into the Odd/Cairn/Electric Bastionland core as my bread and butter. I’ve even got two separate hacks based on that ruleset in the works.
It’s fantastic, for me, because it’s streamlined down to bare minimum functionality, strips out a lot of what annoys me about other RPGs, but provides a stable base for me to build back on top any bits and pieces I miss or a given group of players will enjoy. Small enough that I can fit the entire system in my brain at once, while still sharing enough common language and concepts with more traditional d20 systems that running any random module I pick up is a piece of cake.
My favorite TTRPG overall is Hero System 6e. It’s crunchy and there’s a learning curve, but once you “get it” you can build anything and have it work with everything else. It’s like having a tabletop physics engine that just tells me what happens when a super-kid punches a train in a cinematically reasonable way. It’s a fantastic game for superheroes, but I’ve yet to find a genre I wouldn’t run in it.
Im glad you like Lancer! Ive been trying to statrt a game with my friends- weve only played dnd 5e together but they all enjoy combat, we sometimes run “fight clubs” or just out of context combat encounters, so I hope theyll enjoy Lancers combat. And, unfortunately im the only sci fi person in a friend group of fantasy people so Ive been dying for a sci fi game haha