A universal, smooth-running RPG?
A universal, smooth-running RPG?
Hello everyone!
I’ve had some issues with D&D 5E lately and would like to try something else. I’ve thought a bit about what I actually want from a new system and came up with this:
The RPG should
- be universal a.k.a. adaptable to different settings
- be able to include magic of some kind, preferably already offering that option by its default rules
- be balanced between different character archetypes/classes (if such exist)
- guarantee smooth and fast combat (specifically less complicated than D&D 5E)
- guarantee smooth play in general, no constant looking up rules
- encourage role-playing (not necessarily via rules, but IMO D&D 5E neglects RP by its rules being overly focused on combat)
- still offer as much customization options as possible
- be easy to modify if needed and easy to create homebrew content for (e.g. items, monsters)
- be suitable for one-shots as well as longer campaigns
- have an online tool or a clearly structured index to look up rules/other stuff
- already have some homebrew content available on the internet, as well as a platform to discuss rulings
Using the criteria above, I put together a list of potential candidates:
- Adventurers!
- AGE
- Apotheosis
- Cortex Prime
- Cypher
- Dungeonslayers
- Fate (Core, Accelerated and/or Condensed)
- Freeform Universal
- Fudge
- Genesys
- Hero System
- HeroQuest
- Ironsworn
- Low Fantasy Gaming
- Mini Six
- Old School Essentials
- PbtA (and/or more specifically Dungeon World)
- Prose Descriptive Qualities
- Risus
- Savage Worlds
- The Black Hack
- World of Dungeons
- Worlds Without Number
- Whitehack
However, I only read about each RPG briefly… and as you can see, the list is still very long. Do any of the systems named don’t fit what I’m actually looking for or meet the requirements listed above especially well? My goal is to bring the list down to 2-3 RPGs, ultimately choosing from them. Oh, and if you think there is another RPG that I haven’t named, but fits my needs better than all the others: Recommend away!
Many thanks for all your help!
EDIT: added suitability for longer campaigns as a desirable quality
So I've been transitioning to GURPS lately.
For smooth, simple gameplay you can run GURPS Lite. Or Ultra Lite, I don't think it's possible to get much simpler than Ultra Lite.
However, there is also a lot of content in the full system and supplements, so you can add the bits and pieces you like to the Lite framework. Want modifiers for targeting specific body areas? It's in there. Want penalties from bleeding out? It's in there. Want a robust magic system? There are several to choose from. Want to homebrew abilities, items, spells, pretty much anything, without breaking the game balance? All the tools are there.
Everything is customizable. It's designed for any setting. Sure, there are a lot of rules, but even the publishers are very insistent that they're all optional. It's basically an encyclopedia of mechanics you can use to add as much crunch as you want to your game of make believe, whatever that looks like.
GURPS Lite is secretly the real core rulebook. The Basic Set is a supplemental toolbox. :P
I'm only half-joking, because if/when you get the hang of GURPS, building up from the Lite version is so much easier than starting with the Basic Set, cutting out the bits you don't want, then maybe adding more from supplements/house rules. And it's a much easier way to actually learn the dang game.
But once you do, it's a really flexible system, with a dead simple core (roll 3d6 under some number), with a ton of options if and when you need or want them.
Yeah, I think if you're comfortable with the
Wing it -> Oh this is actually coming up pretty often -> Add mechanic
process, then it's basically the perfect system
I have been where you are (although I left DnD at 4e).
I ended up switching to Savage Worlds. For me it hits the sweet spot of crunch and narrative freedom. The combat is grid based like DnD (or Theater of the mind if you prefer), but even max level characters don't take more than a minute or 2 to resolve their turn. It's dead simple to learn well enough to run and play but offers a great variety of more in depth mechanics if you want to spice things up. (IMHO it has the best system for mass battles of any published system and one of the best chase mechanics, two things that are severely lacking in e.g. DnD).
As for settings:
- Pathfinder has a really good official Savage Worlds version, if you want to stick to phantasy
- Deadlands (Horror Western) is phantastic
- 50 fathoms is pirates
- Rippers for Van Helsing Style monster slaying
- Big Apple Sewer Samurai: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles without the official license
- Homebrew settings that I've run: Stone Age Super Heroes, Avatar the last Airbender meets Roman Legions behind the Steampunk Stargate, Firefly
Sounds great! By mass battles, do you mean larger monster groups of like 20-100 entities or actually entire armies? I'll stick to fantasy for the most part like you said, but it's good to have a system that's generally adaptable to different settings. Does the Pathfinder version run on Pathfinder rules, too, and if so, can it be used for the Savage Worlds rule system instead?
I generally use the mass battle rules when you have at least 20 combatants on each side, because at that point I can't be bothered with miniatures anymore. The mass battle rules actually abstract the number of combatants away. The large side has strength 10, the smaller one has a corresponding fraction, so there is no upper limit to how large the involved armies can get.
The rules for Pathfinder in Savage Worlds are completely separate from the original Pathfinder rules. The original Pathfinder stuff can't be easily converted to Savage World's, because the d20 System of PF is very different to the dice chain savage worlds system. SW is also not attrition based like DnD or PF (as in, challenge is increased by using up PCs HP, spell slots etc), which requires a different style of adventure design.
IIRC the PF for Savage Worlds Game Masters Handbook has pointers for converting other PF material, but it's not a straight forward process.
All that said: I'd encourage anyone coming from DnD to switch to something non claasic-Fantasy when first trying SW. By changing the setting it's easier to get used to a new set of rules and style of adventure.
PbtA is more of an engine than a game. You can technically run anything with it if you don't mind making entire play books for each setting. At that point you're basically making a new game
I'd recommend taking a look at BESM though. It's more anime themed, but it's a competent system with a lot of flexibility built in. Magic kinda has rules, but it's treated like any other power your character can have. You buy the effects and limitations of your spells when you make or improve your characters
Another good option is WOIN. Technically it's 3 games (OLD, NEW, and NOW), but all three books are fully compatible with each other by design and the medieval fantasy book (OLD) has rules for magic and creating a spellcaster. The 80s action movie book (NOW) has rules for firearms and mutant powers, and the space faring sci-fi book (NEW) has rules for cybernetics and psychic powers
From the games you mentioned, the most flexible ones (that I've actually read) are: Risus, Fate (same as fudge), Savage Worlds, Whitehack, Freeform Universal, Hero System, and Worlds Without Number (mostly compatible with Stars Without Number btw). Of those, the fastest combat is probably Freeform Universal. Savage Worlds is fairly fast too, but more tactical. Worlds Without Number probably has the most consistent combat pacing though
I got the free version of WWN today as other reviews I've read gave a very positive impression. But it appears quite focused on one setting, do you think it's adaptable to other scenarios without too much work? (aside from Stars Without Number, of course)
Apart from that, Freeform Universal also wandered into the top tier of the original list after some more research.
Latter Earth is just the "default" setting. There's a chapter titled Creating Your Campaign that has advice for world building from the top down and some magical traditions come with advice for running them in different settings. Classes are kept generic enough to work in pretty much any setting and there's advice for making new races
I think you can cross of PbtA off the list, since it is an engine rather than a universal rpg. You surely can run any setting in opbta but you'd have to write the according Moves from scratch.
Cortex Prime is a toolbox to build your preferred level of crunch and/or focus driven system, so there is a lot to put together before you even get to setting specific stuff.
I liked running Genesys but my players did not. We are all pretty happy with Savage Worlds right now and imo it checks every box you have mentioned.
Of the systems you listed, and based on your requirements, I would suggest looking more into pbta/dungeon world, old school essentials, world without numbers, and maybe black hack. Though a number of them I have far from any amount of experience with, so there might be better ones listed too.
Do Old School Essentials and Worlds Without Number also work for long-term campaigns if that wish should arise?
PbtA seems to be too general to be usable without a lot of effort (as others have pointed out); I've read some more about The Black Hack and that probably won't click with me, too. The list's getting shorter, nice!
"dungeon world" is "D&D pbta" (that's why i listed it as pbta/dw). You should be able to play that as a long term campaign just fine. But yes, pbta is a framework, and DW is a specific use of that framework to make a D&D-like game.
Thank you very much for your replies! After some more research based on what you've told me, I'll settle with Worlds Without Number and keep Genesys and Mini Six as back-up plans.
I really like Fate. It's a generic system you can run in any setting. It doesn't have any of D&D's stupid baggage like martial-caster divide or the adventuring day. The way aspects work feels to me more intuitive and like how new players try to do RPGs. That's stuff like "But he's a paladin surely if I invoke his love of justice he'll go along with our plan." New players try that all the time until D&D hammers the idea out of them.
However! Fate does not really work if your players suck. Sorry. Passive players that want to just sit there while you tell them a story aren't a good fit. Players that get easily discouraged and give up rather than coming up with clever ways to succeed-with-cost won't like it. It's described as a more writer's room mode of playing sometimes. Everyone needs to have a little GM in them. But then it can be a lot of fun.
I've looked up further reviews, and this one sounds really interesting, especially the way players set up their characters' abilities. However, there were some mentions about more or less frequent discussion of rulings during play that could take up some time. Does that match your experience? Was there a certain aspect of play that left especially much uncertainty rules-wise?
I think it really depends on the table.
Here's an example. The game doesn't have explicit rules for what it means to have a broken arm. Someone might suggest that as a consequence for something, and an argumentative table might later be like "you can't just climb a ladder like it's nothing with a broken arm!"
A good player would probably take this as an opportunity to self-compel and get a fate point. An annoying player will try to weasel out of any consequences.
The game doesn't work well if the players don't buy into the premises. A more rules heavy game will have like impartial tables set out- "see it says on page 183 if one arm is broken you can ascend a ladder at quarter Dex per round". Fate is more hands off and trusts your friends to be reasonable about such minutia. Do you trust your friends?
As to the specific rules it does provide about attack and defend and overcome, I didn't find it any worse than other systems. But in my experience most players are really bad at learning and reading and remembering, so it wasn't a perfectly smooth run.
Genesys is kinda good. My preferred generic system. Enough crunch and customization to give it meat while still flowing nicely. Only downside would be if you and your group needs physical dice as it uses proprietary ones.
Ironsworn (especially with Starforged) can almost be used as a setting generic system. Change up Oracles and Assets and you have a whole new setting.
You can also look at families of games, such as Crawford's X without Numbers. There you will get a system made for a setting but it still being oretty much the same system.
I don't mind game-specific dice. Without having read the actual rules of it, Ironsworn's vow mechanic seems like a double-edged sword to me. Seems to encourage RP and progress, but also sounds like it makes any side-track activity pointless. Am I getting something wrong? Also, is an Ironsworn game over once the PCs' vows are fulfilled? (It would be cool to have a system that makes longer campaigns possible. I'll add that to the original post.)
If there is a side track that interests players/characters they swear a vow for it. Multiple concurrent vows that possibly intersect I've found to be the norm. If you have a big quest (vow) it is often smart to divide it into minor quests (small vows). Honestly vows are just quests by another name.
And yes you can run very long campaigns. Things may start peter out when you run out of interesting assets for the characters, when they are "complete".
I don’t mind game-specific dice.
You will when you lose one of them and the publisher is out of business or no longer supporting that game or the like. Genesys looks like a great game for my tastes, but the custom dice are a show-stopper for me. They're simply unavailable where I live unless I import them at great expense.
You might also consider Index Card RPG
For the requirements you give I'd reach for Fate, CORPS, or EABA. Fate is the most story game-like and if you're more interested in the simulation side of things it may not be your cuppa. EABA and CORPS (both by BTRC) are both fairly traditional, somewhat crunchy, but very regular and thus easy to learn game systems.
CORPS is not supported any longer, but that's OK. It's still available and it has quite a few endearing traits (chief of which is that it's an astonishingly thin book for what it covers). It's built on d10 resolution and a theory that removing unnecessary die rolls is a good thing. (It's not a diceless game, mind, just a game that removes the unnecessary die rolls, keeping the tension on places where it matters.) When the Traveller suite of games was going through a sequence of absolutely terrible rules (first Traveller: The New Era, then Traveller 4), we switched our Traveller game over to CORPS and it worked really well. We also used it for a fantasy campaign and a near-future "in the headlines" game.
EABA is the current BTRC house system and it, too, is a generic game that fits in a smaller space than you'd think given the subjects covered. It approaches things from the opposite philosophy of CORPS: die-rolling is fun! I've only ever played in one campaign of EABA. I liked it, but have a slight preference for CORPS.
Other games you might want to look at are Chaosium et al's "BRP" (Basic Role-playing) the core engine behind games like Runequest, Ringworld, Superworld, etc. PDQ (Prose Descriptive Qualities) is pretty nifty on a read but I've never tried it so I can't comfortably recommend it. If you want to try a diceless game out that still feels like an actual game, Active Exploits is really cool. (Diceless, however, is not to everybody's taste.)