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[Glowcat]

Something I've been thinking about lately as I try to put together a homebrew RPG game system is what makes a system good compared to others. Obviously there is a lot of variability here depending on preferences. Some prefer more cinematic games with light rules and heavy on drama, others prefer a more "wargame" approach with a lot of crunch that makes battles acquire a tactical thrill, and others "game" more for social interaction than the game itself. Tabletop RPGs are especially difficult because their biggest appeal comes from being able to do ANYTHING. Players are supposed to have complete agency compared to computer games that are limited by their programming. At least until DMing true AIs are created.

So back to my Topic Question: What Tabletop RPGs do you like and why do you like them? Also, what do you hate?

I'm going to broaden this to more than just a system's scope because I also want to know what it is about the rules that people enjoy. Sure, GURPs might be able to cover any setting, but what makes the gameplay fun compared to a more specialized system? Do things transfer easily between different settings? How is gameplay handled after "the end game" is reached?

If a system doesn't plan for things that players are likely to do, such as say... build their own dungeon, enter politics, start a trade empire, or explore planets on a spaceship they designed themselves... then what advantage does its specialized system have over one that has planned for those occasions? Are the rules flexible enough that players can easily build those sub-systems themselves by using parts of the main game?

Use gameplay examples if it helps you illustrate how a system works.

-------------------------------------

In my case (semi-rant):

Personally, I really like the basics behind how White Wolf's Storyteller system handles resolutions and their attribute/skill system. You can match and mix however is needed to represent how well the character can accomplish their goal. How well you hit your opponent comes naturally by comparing number of successes between combatants; critical hits neatly fall into additional successes brought about by 10's. I've also found the success system extremely useful when it comes to extended actions and determining how long they take. More dice results in a better chance of not only completing a task but completing it sooner due to reaching its difficulty in less attempts. One doesn't need "take 10" or "take 20" rules, you just give players a target number of successes and let them desperately attempt to pick a lock while a pack of werewolves bears down on them.

However, I'm also more into D&D's wargame roots, enjoying the ability to plan out a combat with elaborate battle maps, tons of options, and abilities that are less about creating a cinematic feel and instead seek to create (what is meant to be) balanced yet engaging tactical combat. Well, besides the stunt bonus from Exalted, because encouraging players to get into their characters' actions is just cool. Storyteller is also lacking compared to DnD when it comes to a good ol' fashion dungeon romp. The problem I have with DnD is that its mechanics are very poor at representing more than a wargame. To achieve its balance it railroads you down classes and levels. The result is a very inflexible build system that makes NPC classes or non-combat aims a joke. Any non-combat abilities are tacked onto a combat focus and don't even think about mixing classes unless you've got a specific build in mind. I'm also not a fan of how it deals with certain aspects of combat. Armor equals chance to hit me, and THEN damage is calculated? Shouldn't the armor absorb the blow and instead I rely on my parrying/blocking/dodging to keep out of harm's way? Not to mention my issues with its idea of balance, how XP is normally earned, its economy being nonsensical, and a slew of other problems that turn me off of the DnD systems. This is talking about primarily 3.Xe DnD. I haven't even touched 4e which sounds like they tried to solve all their problems by adding more WoW.

[C4lv1n]

Like: GURPS
Why: You can do ANYTHING

Hate: FATAL
Why: Anal circumference

[Glowcat]

Like: GURPS
Why: You can do ANYTHING

Hate: FATAL
Why: Anal circumference

I was hoping for something a little more in-depth than this sort of answer. I always hear that GURPS can do anything, but can it do anything particularly well? What kind of mechanical substance can I find behind it? Do the mechanics cause gameplay to slow down unnecessarily? How can its combat be exploited?

It would probably help if I managed to actually play GURPs sometime. My real game experience has been limited to a handful of the more marketed systems.

[Draco18s]

I like various systems for various reasons.

I like ShadowRun because it's a game where you play people who shoot other people in the face for money (or as it was put once, "This is an industry based on face shooting for fiscal returns").  It's like what would happen if Lord of the Rings and The Matrix had a bastard child.  It's fucking awesome (I mean, hell, a fucking dragon got hit by an orbital laser and survived!  Another dragon gifted him "the fruitcake we've exchanged each year since 2020" in his Last Will with the comment "unlike you, I'm really dead."  I'm not kidding)

Why I dislike ShadowRun: sometimes the rules are ambiguous, or the developers were clearly on crack (when they aren't embezling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company), or the rules are incomplete ("what happens when a shapeshifter in armor shifts to animal form?  How long does the shift take?"), or just make no fucking sense.

D&D 3.5:
Why I like it: Flexibility of unique character concepts, class choices, and stuff.
Why I hate it: Sheer number of class choices, items, feats, and the bloody mess of finding that One Last Thing.

D&D 4.0:
Why I like it: Clean and easy to use choice selection.  Interesting effects and monsters.
Why I hate it: Half the choices are clearly bunk.  Not that it matters much, your class defines half your character, your items the other half.  "Paladin-chu has reached level 8.  Paladin-chu can learn a new ability, but Paladin-chu already knows its maximum number of abilities.  Forget one?  Yes/no"

Alpha Omega
Why I like it: It's a really well written rather obscure game.  It has a great setting.  It's got huge character potential.  It's got a rather interesting sense of balance (tests are "roll your dice, add your modifier."  Do you want bigger dice, or a higher modifier?)
Why I dislike it: The balance....doesn't work in some places.  I found a "spell" that I could cast to give the entire party "make your stat a d%" 4 times in the next 2 hours.  At the cost of about 8 "endurance" (of 70, before I needed to cut myself to cast more spells (mmm, blood magic)).  Making stats d% basically means that for the "I have high modifier" characters I just gave them "big dice" too.  That they could use 4 times anytime in the next 2 hours.  It basically made the game unplayable, as with one spell I made the "stat vs. skill" issue moot.

Pathfinder:
See D&D 3.5

XCrawl:
See D&D 3.5, only with fucking awesome setting.

Blue Planet:
Reasonable game.  Kind of World of Darkness style mechanics, but set In Space with gene-lifted animals (specifically dolphins and orcas, nothing else (WTH?)).  Problems I have with it are that the rules didn't go far enough.  There were only three races you could play: human, dolphon, orca.  Or a gene-tweaked human who had cat genes, but you were still, basically, human.  The setting was also weak (there were no overarching themes that could be played to, like some vague Evil out in the world: just a habitable water-world with some rather primitive natives).  GM I played with was also a douche (he, honest to god, couldn't figure out how to run a voice-chat game; 90% of everything that happened happened via private text chat, to the utter exclusion of the main channel).
Side note: characters do not have a "health" value or really any kind of damage mechanic.  Damage just induces penalties, you die when those penalties are large enough that the GM declares the character dead (i.e. the penalty is so large that they could never succeed at even basic tasks).
Humorous antecedent: I, as an anthro komodo dragon (GM added more races, as the system theoretically supported it: human baseline was 0 in everything) stupidly accepted a boxing match with his polar bear boss.  I spent two months in the hospital recovering after the first round of combat.

World of Darkness:
Meh.

Brontosaurus Rex:
Why I like it: You can play a mother fucking velociraptor.  Also, it's the Wild Wild West, but In Space (see previous In Space link), with dinosaurs.
Why I don't like it: I don't own it, no one I know will run it.  No one I know has even heard of it.

Serenity RPG:
Why I like it: It's based on Firefly
Why I dislike it: There's nothing to do, and money is meaningless.  We made Tech x5 booze, sold half of it for a pile of money (1000 credits?) but had no idea what kind of buying power that had, because anything that was within that price range we already had, and anything outside of it we didn't want, or was so ungodly expensive as to Not Be Acquirable Through In Game Advancement (i.e. a new spaceship).

Traveler:
Why I like it: you can die in chargen.  It's kind of funny if you do.
Why I dislike it: Money is meaningless because we broke the system.  Our barterer could go to an iron-starved world, buy all of the iron on the market, pay less than normal market price for it, ship it to a iron-mining asteroid and sell it for a profit, after expenses.
See also: Serenity.

Dresden RPG:
Why I like it: the scribbled notes in the margins of the book from the characters if fucking awesome.
Why I dislike it: it's too easy to create characters of vastly different power levels.  I was ineffectual in all ways, another character was a glass cannon.  Another character was slightly less deadly, but basically unkillable.
Side notes: interesting combat/damage system.  I'm not sure it works, but it was different.

Albedo: Platinum Catalyst
Why I like it: You play five characters, that's right, a whole squad.  You have one main character who's fleshed out, and then four supporting characters--generally of the same "class" as you (though not always, you can be a soldier with three other soldiers and a medic)--who simply have a name, an occupation, and a general "this is how good they are" stat.  Oh, and Moral.  They have 1 moral, if it goes to 0 (by being shot at, for example) they freak out and cower in a corner (and they're not green recruits; green recruits start with 0).  If they survive enough missions with you, they get a boost.  To 3.
Why I dislike it: The setting is weak, there are no stated enemy monsters.  Your simply a Guy In The Military who does whatever his commanding officer says (which is usually shooting at the other guys, which tend to be rabbits, because rabbits breed too fast and thus declared war on everyone else--yes, it's a furry game, you can actually play any animal you can think of; it's supposedly based off some comic book and has plot, blah blah blah, but....as a game it's weak).

Iron Claw/Jade Claw
Another furry game.  Decent mechanics.  Lack of defined things to fight.  Low following (it's a nitch game for a nitch market, competing with all the other furry-centered games), but will designed.

World Tree
I've played this once, and I wasn't allowed to make my own character, because apparently doing that is a 4 day grueling exercise (under the assumption that a character for any RPG mentioned above can be reasonably created in under 4 hours, a simple, bare bones World Tree character takes 14).  Avoid it.  It's...meh.  Although I did get some humor out of it, as my sister didn't quite "get" it and tried to sniff everyone to root out the BBEG (dogs can do that, right?  That's socially acceptable!  Not.  She also played a horse in Iron Claw who "stayed outside and ate grass."  The rest of us made "this beer tastes like horse piss" jokes that went right over her head).

...and I think that covers it.  Every RPG game I've ever played (and one that I haven't and would like to).

Wait, no, one more.  Didn't play this one, but sat in on about 60% of each session (I had class).

Scion
Why I like it: You play godlings, that is, the children of gods.  Hercules and the like.
Why it's fucking awesome: you can play at three power levels: Hero (Xena-like), Demigod (Hercules-like), and God (Zeus).  Entire campaigns spanning years of real-life sessions can be played in each power level.  The game I watched went from starting-hero to ending-god in 11 weeks.  It was the most epic game ever run by the one and the only Jim.  Who, last I knew, was working for the Secret Service as a translator (he speaks...Arabic?)
Why I dislike it:  I....I have nothing bad to say about this system.  I didn't play it, so I didn't get a good dig into the rules.  And Jim ran it, so even if there were flaws, he ran it like a fucking madman (Jim is the only person that should ever be allowed to drink at a table-top RPG game, and even then, only when he's the GM).  This game had the greatest NPC ever devised.  Our "straight man" Dan (Dan is the straightest arrow ever forged) was playing a character who had a raven familiar.  That raven was a drunk, womanizing, racist bastard.  He once created a portal to somewhere in a puddle of hobo urine.  They found the raven eating a steak (with fork and knife) one time.  His ex-girlfriend (one of) was a Roc.
Oh, and the best line of the game (well, one of, and the only one I can remember), from Dan using Epic Manipulation (as a GM note): "If my friends (the other PCs) end the world, I want to be the first one back when it restarts."  And yes, it came up.

Oh, a few more:

RIFTS:
Why I would play it: you can play a dragon.  Or a time-traveling velociraptor.
Why I wouldn't: the rules are worse than GURPS

Road Hogs (or: The I Can't Believe it's Not a TMNT: After the Bomb Expansion¹)
Why I would play it: It's a game entirely based around vehicular combat in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where everyone is a mutant (get it?  Road hogs?).  The rules are incredibly detailed (including hit tables for bullets hitting the engine block, or the fuel line, or the exhaust...)

¹It technically is, but the base game was intended for younger audiences and the expansion really...wasn't.  Or After the Bomb was that game.  I don't really recall now.

[Neyvn]

Why I hate TTRPGs :: Cause there is no one around my area that does play them, and if there was, the ones I know of are Minmaxer's and All manner of Bad Roleplaying/Gamer things. Wanna play a Fallout inspired game, hope you want to bring magic into it, or telepathy/psychokinesis. And yeah Mutants are not ugly deformed things, they are X-Men. Did the player know anything about Fallout, Nope. Would she listen, NOPE...

[Glowcat]

Another dragon gifted him "the fruitcake we've exchanged each year since 2020" in his Last Will with the comment "unlike you, I'm really dead."  I'm not kidding)

I read the will before. It's one of those things that makes me really want to play a Shadowrun game. A great setting like that is a bonus to any game system.

[Draco18s]

Why I hate TTRPGs :: Cause there is no one around my area that does play them, and if there was, the ones I know of are Minmaxer's and All manner of Bad Roleplaying/Gamer things. Wanna play a Fallout inspired game, hope you want to bring magic into it, or telepathy/psychokinesis. And yeah Mutants are not ugly deformed things, they are X-Men. Did the player know anything about Fallout, Nope. Would she listen, NOPE...

There's a game out there, that I wish I could remember the name of (and find).  Something like Monsters or Monsters Under the Bed or...something.  You play little children with imaginary monster pets.  Apparently it's mechanically impossible to make an overpowered character (best example is "your monster friend is insubstantial and immune to damage" except that it's also immune to picking things up and such, and thus not actually a good thing).

I've only heard about this game, never seen any of the materials, and actually kind of doubt its existence.  Next best bets for anti-powergaming are D&D 4.0 (it takes a lot of work to make an overpowered character) or Iron Claw/Jade Claw.  Followed by ShadowRun (while there are known ways to Break the Game, they're trivial to house rule into oblivion, it's also expected that a starting points character can single handedly take a modern day swat team).

Another dragon gifted him "the fruitcake we've exchanged each year since 2020" in his Last Will with the comment "unlike you, I'm really dead."  I'm not kidding)

I read the will before. It's one of those things that makes me really want to play a Shadowrun game. A great setting like that is a bonus to any game system.

It's freaking awesome.  We once stole an oil tanker for $30,000 because we needed the work.
The back-history is also freaking huge and makes for epic reading any time of day or night.  It should also be trivial to get your group interested in playing ("How would you like to play an elf stripper ninja?  How about a brain-in-a-jar cyborg?  What about a mage who commands the opposition like marionettes?  Would you like to drive around in an armored van mowing down the enemy with turret mounted machine guns?  Play Bruce Lee and make Bruce Lee look like an amateur?")

[Glowcat]

Something I just remembered, but I don't like systems where character archetypes are expected to focus on a few attributes because the rest do about jack squat for them. i.e. I hate dump stats. If all characters aren't encouraged to round themselves out a bit then it becomes easier to min/max the stats which are more useful to their type and just let the specialist do whatever it is you expect of them. Why do you need Charisma? Let the bard/talker handle it. Thinking? Pff, I'd rather get more Strength bonuses... which is pretty ironic since it takes thinking to figure out Str is superior in those cases. When these weaknesses can appear with some regularity it behooves players to seriously consider whether they should continue boosting their primary stat(s) or shore up their vulnerabilities. This doesn't work when the entire game is based around specialties and taking a detour just means you start to suck at everything.

This can pigeonhole particular character types too, such as reducing warriors to meat-heads who wield big sticks, or casters who are more scrawny bookworm wizard than badass characters like Odin who've traded an eye for ultimate wisdom and carry around the talking skull of a vanquished god for consul. What happened to cunning warriors who use their wits or play with their enemy's mind during a battle? A warrior whose primary weapon is his or her tongue? This can sort of be done within skill-based systems, but in class based games the best you're likely to get is some kind of charm spell which is easily resisted or a Dread Pirate prestige class at best. No real crossover between Physical and Mental stats.

[Soulwynd]

I vote Shadowrun all the way.

The usual rules excuse can be easily fixed by your GM actually proposing a rule and everyone agreeing on it. Or like me, saying the rule is X and either agree or GTFO. Even on the fly. Just remember to write it down for the next time.

My least favorite of all times, but still playable would be D&D. Any version. I just can't stand it. I actually like Forgotten Realms, but the D&D systems? No way. I'd rather GURPS in Forgotten Realms instead. But actually, there was a GM/Alternative ruleset book for D&D 3.5 that completely got rid of hit points and was pretty much the only way I could stand playing D&D. It did mean more dice rolling, but it compensated the fact you never really knew when the next hit would be the fatal one. You would know you're in bad shape, but that's pretty much it.

My notable mention would be FATAL. Lots of tables, lots of insane fun, lots of crazy shit going on. With the right kind of people, you can laugh like hell playing FATAL.

The underdog for me would be In Nomine. The rules were pretty bleh, but I loved the setting. There was an In Nomine book for GURPS, so at least you could play the cool setting with some decent ruleset.

[freeformschooler]

I really like FUDGE, because I'm an awful GM that gets as much out of basically writing his own rulebook -- just for fun, even -- than I get out of actually playing with friends using it. So far I haven't found an even slightly well known system that lets the GM improvise and create as much as FUDGE does. Sure, you can use house rules and stuff with any system, but it's not usually expected of you...

[Draco18s]

[Stuff about dump stats]

ShadowRun still has dump stats, but they do come up, depending on what stat and what "archetype" you're going for, as well as events that come up in-game.

The stats are:

Strength
Body
Agility
Reaction
Intuition
Logic
Willpower
Charisma
Edge*
(Magic / Resonance)
[Essence]

Edge, Magic (or Resonance: it's not magic, we swear), and Essence are all special stats.
Edge: the luck stat.  the more you have of it, the better having it is.  But viable characters can be made with 1 Edge.
Magic/Resonance: the I do shit with my MIND stat.  For those that have it, more is better, and while most mage/adept/technomancers will want as much of it as possible, there are characters out there with only 2 or 3 points of it (after Essence reduction).  However, most characters shouldn't have a magic/resonance score.  In practice about 4 in every 5.6 PCs has a magic stat.
Essence: the "cyberware eats your soul" stat.  The more augmentation you do, the less Essence you have.  Any essence lost also reduces magic/resonance.  While mages (etc) want to stay away from cyber/bio-ware, spending 1 point of essence on useful cyber isn't that big of a loss to Magic/Resonance, but sizable gain in other stuff.

Specials out of the way...

Strength: your ability to lift stuff and jump long distances.  Generally doesn't come up much, but everyone has at least a 2 so they don't look like a fat guy in a fat suit.  Typical dump stat, mostly because the game doesn't promote its use enough (like taking super vulnerability to poison in Diablo 1 (?) where poison damage didn't exist).

Body: the ability to shrug off damage.  More is better, no one likes being shot, and the more you have the more armor you can wear (which is always a good thing).  Again, have a few points or be the fat guy in a fat suit.

Agility: the aim skill.  More agility, the easier it is to shoot people (in the face for money).  Mages can dumpstat this, but seeing as there's nothing mechanically preventing a mage from picking up a gun and shooting people (in the face for money) there's no reason for them to dump it.

Reaction: the ability to not be seeing not get hit by bullets.  Everyone should have this in spades, it's the only thing that stages bullets down from Deadly to No Injury.  Body and armor only reduce the amount of damage, but rarely to 0.

Intuition: the I See You stat.  Also the You Don't See Me stat (stealth is agility, shadowing is intuition).  Can also be a drain stat for mages (drain stat: what you use to resist damage from spells).  Even the muscle should have a few points of this, if only to have more dice to Perception.

Logic: the I Am A Brain stat.  While hackers/riggers don't technically need this stat (because everyone is a script kiddy), its generally bad form for a hacker/rigger to dumpstat this stat.  Can be a drain stat.

Willpower: the You Can't Knock Me Out stat: used to resist spells, and it gives you more boxes of stun damage you can take before falling unconscious.  Also a drain stat (for all flavors of mage).

Charisma: the Face stat.  Even though most characters will never enter a social situation, they should have at least a few points of Charisma (or look like ugly motherfuckers who are brutish and rude: no one hires a team of rude, brutish people, even if the magically pretty dryad says they should) and at least one social skill, just so that if they do end up alone they can still talk their way out of a situation.  Can also be a drain stat.

[Sergius]

Another vote here for FUDGE. I still haven't played it, but I love the simplicity. But even more awesome is Spirit of the Century... to me the setting is a bit meh, but the mechanics are quite amazing. With a bit of tuning and powering-down, a lot of settings can be converted. Heck, there's a whole Spirit of Eberron conversion that is even more pulpy than D&D Eberron, and it's meant to be pulpy.

I still need to get that SotC game started. If only I didn't suck at adventure making...

EDIT: Forgot to mention my least favorite systems:

Rifts: RAEG

D&D: So overused. And the fanboys are always like "they changed it now it sucks". A lot of people can't even fathom trying something else than this, AND the version they're used to. Not even try other systems. (I don't normally like to badmouth 4E as I think it's neat and clean and streamlined, but I think it's targeted exactly at this kind of people even more than the older versions).

[sluissa]

I actually really like Traveller, especially Mongoose Traveller although Classic Traveller is close enough I wouldn't mind playing it either.

I love the setting and the openness of the Traveller Universe and rulesystem. You can do practically anything. Wanna play Star Trek? We have rules for that. Want to play Starship Troopers? We have rules for that. Want to play Firefly/Serenity? We have rules for that. Want to play Conan the Barbarian? We have rules for that.

I would say there's a lot of things it can do non-perfectly, but it can still do them. It's best at sci-fi stuff, but there are rules or ways to bend them for almost any time period and almost any setting.

I'll also say I dislike D&D in almost any form. I've tried playing them all at some point or another and while I could go into detail about the things I hate, I'll just say that the rules they put into place for things often don't make sense. Armor class being the most glaring. But the skills are also often either too generalized (Diplomacy) or too specific (Jump).

[puke]

I play Shadowrun also, but its more about inertia and enjoying the people I play with.  As it has streched over four editions, its setting is hokey, inconsistant, and generally scoffable -- even if you dont have a problem with the fantasy aspects.  The rules are inconsistant as well as overly complex and crunchy (but nowhere nearly as bad as GURPS) and it encourages a practically unparalleled amount of min-maxing and munchkinism.  But hell, some people love it for the same reasons.  and it IS loads of fun.  Also, it presently has the best rules and best writing that it has ever had, in its long history.

FATE is a great system, I really enjoy how Diaspora has adapted the fate system.  Anyone who enjoys Traveller should pick up Diaspora and give it a flip through.  The rules are very light, it plays very fast, and delivers lots of the same flavor.  You could play the same Traveller setting with these rules, I think.

I really like Dogs in the Vinyard.  It isnt for everyone.  It is a pretty dry endictment of frontier religion in the early US.  Mormonism explicitly.  You play teenage thought-police enforcing community standards.  It can be played darkly, where there are no demons -- or lightly and altruistically where there are.  The mechanics emphasize social conflict, and it uses buckets of dice.  Really.  Buckets.

Call of Cthulhu (BRP system) is pretty good.  lightweight, easy to play.  I like the CoC gaming, and the system is easily adaptable to other things.  Its not a particularly good system, except that it is particularly fast and easy and good for one-shots or short run games.

Mutants and Masterminds is probably the best superhero game ever made.  I dont even like superheros, but this game system really wowed me.  Fast, flexable, you can really do anything you want or can imagine.  And it comes out (reasonably) balanced, so your hero group is relativly equal even though they might have wildly diferent power sources, backgrounds, or abilities.

I could talk at length about these or lots of other systems, but thats what I've got off the top of my head for right now.

[Nadaka]

Like: D20 modern.

Like GURPS, it is incredibly flexible. But it is easier to make characters and uses a level based balancing system.

When D&D 3 came out, I loved the system. And then d20 modern perfected it.

Hate: No one plays D20 modern.