Thursday, December 18, 2014

RPGaDay #18 Favorite Game System

After 25 years of role-playing, the normal gamut of cycles of playing styles, and owning more books than some small town libraries, what is my favorite RPG system. 

I was tempted to yell out CoC since (a) I get compliments on how I run the system and (b) it's the only damn thing I run on a regualr basis.  But while CoC may be my go-to game, I'm actually still learning the wonkiness of the system.

I could go with Risus.  It's so simple, it's so clever, and I so don't need to roll dice half the time (but it's fun).  However, if it was my favorite system, I would be running it more than once a year.

Hackmaster?  Talislanta?  No, but they are strong influences on my choice.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (Either edition will do).


C'mon, it's the system of my youth.   I spent considerable space in my brain memorizing the charts so that today, if a bunch of people pointed guns to my head and demanded I run a D&D game, I would use this system and not even blink an eye.  For Christ's sake,  I  got THAC0, and if I understood it, you people are simply weak minded.

(Sidebar:  I never understood why people hated THAC0.  It's just a cleaned up version of the attacked matrix in the 1st Ed DMG  with systematic increases.  The two charts are almost identical.)

AD&D is how I compare new systems  AD&D is the basis for Hackmaster.  I can still see vestiges of AD&D in the new 5e books.  Heck, Talislanta's system was the stripped down version of AD&D and morphed into 3rd. 

For me, the system is quick and simple.  We had four gaming sessions where we fought more monsters than a 3rd-5th edition games fights in an entire campaign... and we may not have even levelled!

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