mine is delta green
Pathfinder is awesome, haters gonna hate
I’m considering becoming a professional GM, some of the more interesting games I’ve come across while planning out my game options include Knave, Ironsworn, Twilight 2000, and Dungeons & Kittens
Let’s not forget
…just to name a few legends adjacent to your listed gems. 🤘🏼
p.s. Pathfinder was, in its early days, a welcome alternative to D&D —for those that accepted a simple streamlining of the TSR/WotC SoP… Though millions of us OGs saw what it was aiming for: D&D in a LBD, but the underlying cray’s just better dressed. 🥲
My selection process was “this one sounds pretty neat”, I had no clue that I was picking legends! I’ll have to take a look at those games!
Love to hear it! 🤩🖖🏼
FWIW:
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Starforged is essentially Ironsworn 2.0 + scifi, as it fine-tuned most of what hindered Ironsworn 1.0 (the actual 2.0 came after, and even learned from Starforged in the process! 🤘🏼)
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PbtA & BitD have spawned dozens of distinct variants, to their credit. (pardon the latter’s redderp link)
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and ISDYSSM is an incredibly accessible game revolving around the group creation of a location, and I love using it as a Session 0 icebreaker to then incorporate said city/grove/etc. in the main game itself —now that the group (of any experience level) feels a personal stake in the story to come!
p.s. Honorable mention for those more interested in roleplay over roll-play:
- Worlds Without Number, and Stars Without Number, by Sine Nomine
- Numenara, Ptolus, Cypher, and Invisible Sun, by the amazing Monte Cook,
- Daggerheart, by Darrington Press of Critical Role fame
Just to name a few more of the absolutely 👨🏼🍳💋👌🏼 indie systems out these days. 🥰
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GURPS fan here. yeah, the core game is really not that complicated, it’s only once you get into the supplements that- HOW DO YOU KNOW I’M BRAZILIAN
As another GURPS fan - do people really get into the settings? I always saw them more as cool worked examples. I guess Traveller took off
Where Paranoia?
You dare talking about this in public???
Hah! Like anyone goes to jail in Paranoia. You’ll be shot dead by your fellow troubleshooters before you ever see the inside of a cell.
So you know how stuff works in Paranoia…. Curious….
Just to note, “indie company” and “2nd biggest game on the market” aren’t mutually exclusive. This isn’t a big market, and most of it is D&D.
Ya, they are an order of magnitude smaller than D&D but also an order of magnitude larger than the #3
Agreed. But they’re still indie. This whole genre is a niche.
TTRPG systems may be well-known and famous to us nerds, so it’s easy to forget that the average person has probably only heard of D&D and a few WoDs. And Pathfinder, of course.
Of course.
My favorite TTRPG is the homebrew system I made myself!
But besides that I’ve played D&D 3, 3.5, 4, 5, 5.5, Pathfinder 1 and 2, CoC, GURPS, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Traveler, Star Wars 5e, and Mini Six. I’m familiar with a lot of others through podcasts, like Paranoia, Toon, VtM, Fate Core, Fiasco, and Over The Edge.
Daggerheart: “Theatre Kid (derogatory)” lmao
This list is actually hilarious
Not to be confused with “theater kid (extremely derogatory)” for Vampire The Masquerade.
Very hard decision, I mean the one I played most and still play with a few friends is in fact “Shadowrun” (2e - 6e), but I have to confess, I never joked about Cyberpunk players, I even played Cyberpunk, sometimes both on the same weekend (weird, right).
Here are the three that I remember having the most fun with:
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“Magna Veritas” and “In Nomine Satanis” (originally from France, iirc), where you played Angels vs Daemons (think “Good Omens” just even more absurd).
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There was one called “Plüsch, Power und Plunder” where you played living plushies, and had to hide the fact that you’re alive from humans.
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“Paranoia”, a game where just surviving was the adventure in a dystopian social credit system, that executed you immediately with killer drones, when you got demoted to the lowest level “Infrared”, but you could just use a new clone and start again.
The most rounded rule system I ever expierienced is ERPS, no levels, no experience, just using the skills/attributes give you a change of increasing that particular attribute or skill (this is also free, but only available in German iirc).
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Damn somebody knows a Pathfinder player they don’t like huh
LANCER is absolutely a vibe and I enjoy very much.
I think my favorite system to run is LUMEN especially with groups that want the freedom to do the coolest thing. I mostly end up running D&D 5e and I’m very tired of being the rules lawyer/ loremaster/ combat manager/ etc.
Rules-light systems like LUMEN actually give my players a chance to get what they want while still paying the cost in resources, with a touch of tactical combat that made a memorable game.
Also a fan of Kids on Bikes, and the exploding dice mechanic from games like Savage Worlds!
Holy crap I have spent so many deep nights/mornings diving into a homebrew world my buddy ran via Savage Worlds. That shit was so legendary
Star Wars 3.5 was my favorite campaign by far. I played an Ewok engineer that fixed things by banging on them with his rusty wrench. I can do a damned good Ewok voice. It was a riot. He also found and fixed a hoverdisc and just sat on it, floating behind the party wherever they went.
Nobody’s mentioned Dungeon Crawl Classics (and variants), which is a shame.
I just did - cheers!
I really like DCC! Does the d20 without the bloat
I’m just happy to see Lancer get more attention. I don’t really understand why the goblin is apparently transfem coded but I’m happy for those who celebrate anyway
Not sure what the clichés about Fate are. I think it’s a fun light system.
Also there are dozens of us who prefer vampire: the requiem over masquerade. Dozens! I recently started a game of it. So far they killed 3 CEOs and blew up a data center (in the game).
It’s been fun seeing the DND player adapt to “wait I can just do my cool thing as much as I want?”. Like he was going to punch a dude and I was like “are you sure you don’t want to just Mesmerize him? It’s free and more likely to work, given your stats”
If I were making a list of clichés about FATE, I would have to include some variant of “GM may I” on the list.
Like “GM can I invoke my Aspect of ‘Grizzled Private Investgator’ to get a bonus to chasing this guy? I do run a lot.”
And maybe the stereotype of playing Microscope at every session 0, or being a wannabe improv comedian
(I’ve run a lot of FATE and it’s my favorite least favorite system 🤣)
How could they not include EotW series?
Shadowrun.
But nobody wants to play with me (we played one campaign of 4E and nobody else in my group liked it, even tho it’s the one we end up talking about the most) 😩
Shadowrun for me as well. Never got to play 4E, I moved continents and lost my group. :(
(And yes we made fun of Cyberpunk players every chance we got. They hated us for it. Good fun!)
Never played the TTRPG but I get the feeling they would kinda end up being more or less the same except SR has the magic and monsters. IIRC, Shadowrun started as a blatant rip off of Cyberpunk and they actually share quite a bit of items and ideas. But obviously adding magic and mythical monsters to it is vastly superior. 😁
They came out only a year apart, (Cyberpunk in 88, Shadowrun in 89) Not so much ripoff as convergent evolution of ideas, and one group was a bit slower out of the gate.
