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[adwarf]

I've been playing a session of Dungeons, and Dragons during the weekends, and have been looking around on google for some other good systems, and rulesets for tabletop games, or Pen and Paper games, but thus far my searches haven't been that good. Do you guys know any good ones?

PnP/Tabletop Games I know of
----------------------------------------
Dungeons & Dragons (Love the system, and love playing the game.)
Rogue Trader
Deathwatch
Warhammer 40K
The Artifact (Really cool, and lesser known Sci-Fi game)

[RobKGS]

Registered just to answer this, because I had the same question some time back.


The 'Open Source' D6 series would apply.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/29204/D6-Core-Set-%5BBUNDLE%5D?it=1&filters=0_0_0_0_0&free=1

D6 Space, D6 Fantasy, and D6 Adventure. LOTS of free stuff out there to adapt the system to your specific theme, or you can do it yourself. Plenty of paid stuff too (from third parties) if you get into it. Built off the old WEG D6 systems - very simple and fun (IMO).

[Johnfalcon99977]

I have heard of GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System, I Believe), which sounds really good. I haven't tried it as of yet, though.

Registered just to answer this, because I had the same question some time back.

You Registed just to tell us about a certain system? Sounds... Oddly like a spam bot

[ductape]

there was a really interesting one that has a thread on this forum that was, oh, about 3-4 months back. It was based on d20 but was more awesome in some ways. It had a nice PDF book you could DL.

Someone remember that thread?

[neotemplar]

Mwahahahaha... So yeah I look for these all the time and vaguely home-brew my own stuff.


Best frees I've seen are:
Fully Fledged with pictures and such:

Dominion Rules
Eclipse Phase

and for the very simple

Alacrity  (May need some editing, I have a personal super annotated copy to add in various needed stuff, its unpolished but appears to work well.)

Taverns and Drakes (If anyone runs an online game of this please include me? PMs guys Pms!  I mean who wouldn't want to play a game where if you are a goblin you get bonuses for being rude.)

"As a Goblin you are Astonishingly Rude. Anytime you take an action
that is amazingly rude, such as suckerpunching an old man, you add +2 to your
roll."



As far as stuff I bought books for:
Wheel of Time RPG
Shadowrun 4thed
Paranoia (XP I think)
Maid RPG (Shockingly fun, it's very similar to the play style of paranoia only with actual rules that are really simple to use and GM.)

(I'm only really capable of GMing simple stuff like Paranoia and Maid.  Though I could probably do Taverns and Drakes if I wanted to.)

[Lectorog]

there was a really interesting one that has a thread on this forum that was, oh, about 3-4 months back. It was based on d20 but was more awesome in some ways. It had a nice PDF book you could DL.

Someone remember that thread?

Dungeons: the Dragoning 40,000 (7th edition)?

I'm also going to say that modified or reworked 4th edition D&D rules can be really fun to play with. As in, modify it yourself - I don't know of any, sorry (other than mine). And if you don't have 4th edition, this doesn't necessarily apply. Extensive house rules are always a potential, though.

Lastly, Pathfinder is probably the best generic fantasy RPG system, but it isn't free. You can get a PDF for $10, I think, so it's not terribly expensive.

[ductape]

there was a really interesting one that has a thread on this forum that was, oh, about 3-4 months back. It was based on d20 but was more awesome in some ways. It had a nice PDF book you could DL.

Someone remember that thread?

Dungeons: the Dragoning 40,000 (7th edition)?

I'm also going to say that modified or reworked 4th edition D&D rules can be really fun to play with. As in, modify it yourself - I don't know of any, sorry (other than mine). And if you don't have 4th edition, this doesn't necessarily apply. Extensive house rules are always a potential, though.

Lastly, Pathfinder is probably the best generic fantasy RPG system, but it isn't free. You can get a PDF for $10, I think, so it's not terribly expensive.

Nope thats not it, it was more recent and featured rework of the feat system i think. Had a nice PDF book.

[Lectorog]

Rule of Cool? Which, either way, is currently free.

[KoE]

Actually, Pathfinder is playable completely free, because the whole rulebook (sans the art and some fluff, maybe?) is available on their own website. They've kept it updated for new releases, too.

The whole reasons Paizo started Pathfinder was because the Open Gaming License wasn't being carried for to 4th Edition and they didn't want to continue writing adventures for a 'dead' game. So they decided to make a souped-up 3.5e so they could continue to sell their adventures like hotcakes.

[pilgrimboy]

Not free, but my favorite system is the Burning Wheel. The character creation process is so neat. Instead of just choosing a character and stats, you choose a life path that influences who they are.

[Kadzar]

There's Spirit of the Century, a pulp game based on the FATE system (PDF version here), which is in turn based on FUDGE.

[luvmonke]

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the World of Darkness and New World of Darkness system.

The basic concept is pretty simple but at the same time infinitely fascinating, for it takes place in a setting very close to our modern except for one simple fact, "The things that go bump in the night are real" aka urban fantasy.

Essentially things like fairies, magicians, vampires and werewolves exist and have existed for as long as humanity has but they've simply worked hard to keep themselves hidden.   Each separate class of weird having their own reason to do so, from simply knowing their unique gifts are no match for the sheer number of humanity to the surprising fact that human disbelief is so powerful a force that it can actually disrupt their abilities or even cause them to misfire.

As well they have a detailed character creation system that focuses not only on a character physical attributes and skills but also their mental and social aptitudes as well as their virtues and vices.  The rolling system is fairly unique since you're not adding up the total face values of your rolls but rather each die is counted as either a success or failure towards some total needed to perform an action.

Only real downside is that the main Vampire corebook gets a lot of bad press because of some of the asshat shenanigans that have gone down at their LARPing events.  Personally I've mostly done forum and MSN based roleplay, my latest haunt being Edge of Darkness where I roleplay in one of the less known but to me more interesting setting whose corebook goes by the name Geist: The Sin-Eaters.   Their site appealed to me not just because of the great community but also the presence of an in-house dice roller and a wiki that not only summarizes the mechanics but also details the roleplay.

[adwarf]

Thanks for the replies so far, looked at some of the systems and all of them look pretty neat so far

[Sowelu]

It's not free, but if you want some unique and thematically fun game mechanics, look into Deadlands.

If you were a fan of 2nd Ed. D&D, you'd like the original better (crunchier, grittier, more time-consuming game mechanics, more-fun mad science, but kind of a meat grinder).  If you don't mind 4th Ed. D&D, you'd like the new Savage Worlds version better (streamlined, way more balanced and fair, but introduces the 'important people' vs 'mook' concept that some people hate).

Deadlands is what happens if you introduce the supernatural into the Civil War and run with it for a couple decades.  At one of the major battles, suddenly an army of the dead showed up; all kinds of horrible shenanigans crop up at sites of major violence, so the war never quite ends because there's no decisive battles.  The discovery of "Ghost Rock" fuels a steampunk revolution, complete with Mad Science; "hucksters" beat the devil at cards to cast spells, and of course there is some amount of divine and Indian magic too.  The Texas Rangers and the Pinkerton Detective Agency are the South and North's respective supernatural-hunting agencies, and the Rangers' motto is "Shoot It or Recruit It".  The main tabloid paper, of course, covers real supernatural incidents (sometimes).

Die-rolling uses the exploding-dice thing that's so much fun (rolling 3d8 for a skill?  Take the highest number, that's your result.  If you got an 8, reroll and add:  4, 7, 8 -> reroll the 8 and get a 5 -> your result is 13).  Initiative is based on playing cards:  Each round, you draw x cards based on your quickness roll, and you can act in initiative order counting down from ace...but you don't know what the bad guys are holding 'til it comes up.  It runs faster than you think, too.  Hucksters cast spells with actual poker hands (draw X cards, build the best hand you can, pray you don't get a black joker).  Bullets HURT...there's a lot of "the quick and the dead", but you're better off taking the third option of "the smart".  Still, duels at noon are a ton of fun and have some good mechanics.

Also, in case you got any ideas about the supernatural elements of the setting being a battle of Evil against Good?  No, you're wrong.  It's Evil against...uh...well I guess you're hosed, because it's pretty much all evil.  The bad guys feed off of fear, you see, and unless some plain old human heroes step up, that fear's just going to keep on multiplying.

[adwarf]

Any larger scale battle systems you guys know of?

I know about the two Warhammer Tabletop games, but nothing else