Lord_Of_Plum said:
I'm looking for a subtle blend of action and, for lack of a better word, drama. But the most appealing characteristic is high fantasy and the exploring/creating of worlds. Simplicity, if possible, is great. Thanks for the help.
So, here's the most important thing:
You can have fun with any system. You can have fun with no system whatsoever, too. But the whole point of shopping around for a game is that, yes, different systems handle differently. Think of the game as a set of tools. It helps you do certain things. The right tool for the job helps you do those things better and faster. But even with the wrong tool, you can still get results. And, with RPGs, it's pretty easy to modify your tools yourself.
Since this is your first try, don't worry too much about picking the wrong tool for what you want to do. You'll still learn something from the experience anyway.
Just don't let a single bad experience dissuade you -- try a very different tool instead and see if your experience improves!
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that one tool is absolute and perfect and better than another tool. Some games are definitely just plain better than others, but there's also a variety of different niches that they occupy, and no game can do it all perfectly (but no player actually wants to do it all at the same time, either, so there's no issue here). Don't get so attached to one tool that you're afraid to try others -- playing just one game because that's the game you really like is just fine and dandy, playing just one game because you're deathly afraid of anything else is a clear indication that you're not having that much fun to begin with.
Also, because the games are just tools, remember that the thing that actually makes the fun happen is
you. When a game is awesome, it's because
you and your friends are awesome. The rules and the text are just helping you along a bit.
...
So, anyway...
D&D (3.5e and 4e -- these are the editions you're most likely to be playing) generally has:
- Detailed combat action. Battles are resolved turn-by-turn. You roll for an individual spell or an individual attack. That kind of thing.
- Tactical complexity. D&D 3.5 and 4 have a fair bit of resource management. Spells, hit points, gold, actions -- these are all resources you have to control. 3.5e and 4e also do tactical movement in combat, adds a lot. For some people, tactical challenge is 80% of the fun of an RPG. There can be down sides, too, though. D&D fights take a long time to resolve -- the average for my 3.5 groups was probably 45 minutes per battle. Also, this kind of approach draws the focus of the game toward just keeping your character alive, which may be a distraction if you're more interested in some other aspect of play.
- Somewhat lightweight task-based rules for stuff that's not fighting. The rules define a bunch of skills and some situations in which you can use them. Generally this kind of approach is pretty limited, so GMs extend the system on the fly. Somebody says "I want to do this" and you say "Okay, how about you roll this skill check. Here's what happens if you fail, and here's what happens if you succeed."
- A rich (real-world) history that is reflected in tons of quirky spells, monsters, and other concepts throughout the game. You're probably encountered D&D fantasy in video games before, so you probably have some sense of how you feel about the fictional elements.
- Easy access to published campaign settings and adventures for groups who don't want to put their own together.
- Comparatively high prep time. Since the tactical stuff requires fairly complex stats for the enemies, the GM sometimes has to sit down and plan that all out.
- A huge variety of enemies. D&D has entire books filled with different monsters the party could fight.
- Supplements. Supplements are secondary books with extra stuff -- usually new components like monsters and character abilities rather than new basic rules. Most big-name RPGs have supplements because they're a great way for the company to make money; D&D, as the biggest-name game, has tons of supplements. They can be pretty fun to read. Actual usefulness varies. I'd say about a third of the ones for D&D 3.5 were worthwhile, which is a fairly typical track record as far as these things go (don't know about D&D 4's supplement, I don't really follow the game anymore).
- 3rd Edition ("3.0" and "3.5") and 4th Edition are very different as far as the small stuff goes but largely similar as far as the fundamental ideas. 3rd Edition seems to do a bit more with character-building strategy -- picking the right combination of character abilities (and gear) to make yourself awesome. 4th Edition tried to smooth out the highs and lows a bit, making it harder to make a character who overshadows everyone else or a character who categorically sucks; but that does mean that fiddling with characters is a bit less interesting in 4th Edition.
- If you've played video-game RPGs, D&D will be at least somewhat familiar. Classes and levels and alignment and all that.
- In my opinion, the best reason to play D&D is its popularity. D&D is the WoW of the pen-and-paper world. It's easy to find other players. Note that if you want to play a game with your friends, this is pretty much irrelevant -- your friends are right there! But if you want to make friends with RPG players rather than play RPGs with your current friends, having access to a big pool of players can be helpful.
To be honest, I rather hate D&D.
But I had a lot of fun with it before I grew to hate it. It's really not a bad game to start off with, though it can be a bit overwhelming.
So, here's a very different game. It's also a fantasy game with support for action and drama. It's called The Shadow of Yesterday. TSOY has:
- A lightweight general system based around identifying conflicts and setting "stakes" rather than dealing with discrete tasks. There's a special, more complicated approach you can invoke when you want to "zoom in" on something.
- The game's got a simple little experience system that rewards "roleplaying" your character
as you've defined him or her directly.
- Culture is built into the game mechanics -- both what you've learned how to do and what motivates you. This makes the setting punchy and important in a very personal way. (The game has a pretty inventive take on fantasy species, too -- elves are immortal solipsists, for example.)
- Equipment and wealth are abstract. You might like this or you might hate it.
- The game doesn't really do non-sentient monsters too well. Non-player characters are kinda represented in an ad-hoc fashion.
- There is magic, of course. It's culture-bound like everything else. Some of it is a bit too detailed and clunky for my tastes (Three-Corner Magic in particular).
- Default setting is a post-fantasy-apocalyptic fantasy setting (ruins of a fallen civilization and all that), one that I would say skews lightly towards "low fantasy", but I find it very easy to change. You could probably play the game with "high fantasy" themes without any modifications.
- TSOY uses Fudge dice, which are special dice marked with +, -, and 0. Other games use special dice, too, but TSOY's aren't the standard special dice you use for tabletop gaming. It's pretty easy to use standard dice for this, but that does make the game a bit more annoying (you have to translate from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to -1, -1, 0, 0, +1, +1).
- One short book. The rules (but not some of the accompanying setting) are available freely as a Creative Commons text [http://zork.net/~nick/loyhargil/tsoy2/book1--rulebook.html] as well.
I haven't played TSOY nearly as much as I'd like, but I do love it. It's very simple and flexible, I totally want to do a "Conan" kind of thing with this game sometime -- I think setting up the weird cultures using the skills and keys will be a real blast. There's just something really awesome about being able to write "Snake Magic" on your character sheet.
So, that's just two games. I can think of a few others that all or most of the criteria, but I don't think they're necessarily as beginner-friendly. A short run-down... (
I've been editing my post to add more stuff to this section as I think of it.)
Some I've read:
- Reign is a fantasy game with a focus on fighting and leadership. It's got rules for hit locations and stuff but isn't actually any game-mechanically trickier than D&D is. The game's got a pretty inventive setting -- and the author is constantly writing more bits and releasing them online
for free. The game's main claim to fame is a set of abstract rules for interactions between groups -- nations, guilds, &c., but I think the best part about it is the combat mechanics. They manage to be detailed and tactically rich and "crunchy" without being particularly slow or convoluted. The main reason I wouldn't recommend Reign as "my first game" is that I don't think the book has much advice for first-time players.
- Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at the Utmost North is a game of... well, chivalric tragedy. At the utmost north. Anyway, this is an interesting game to try if you want to do full-on freeform with high-level rules that define the overall game structure. It's about knights defending a legendary magical civilization as it is about to perish from the world forever. The game structure is very different from basically every other RPG ever written.
- Primetime Adventure is a game that explicitly emulates TV shows. It's an RPG, but it's got strong elements of what you could call a "storytelling game" (Polaris does, too). Games are structured like a TV series -- you set up little episodes and a general arc, and each character has a certain amount of "spotlight time" and a theme to be resolved during this season. It's very light and easy but quite far outside the mainstream as far as RPGs are concerned.
- Wushu is a highly freeform generic narrative RPG that's pretty good for action-adventure stuff. Basically you get points for describing details of a scene. Again, kinda out of the mainstream.
Some I don't own but know in passing:
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying is a game set in the setting from the Warhammer minis game. It's well-known for its "gritty" approach -- the combat is generally bloody and lethal. Characters develop through chains of little careers, kinda representing a feudal world that's now hitting its Renaissance. Most people say it's grimier and more down-to-earth than the Warhammer fantasy minis game.
- Exalted is White Wolf doing high fantasy. It's magical and mystical and has some shiny art and a pretty powerful authorial voice. It's like a greek myth and a wuxia movie. Your character is a beautiful Adonis with near-godlike powers. You get to roll buckets of dice. There's a social combat system to go with the sword-on-sword kind of combat. The game has some pretty complicated mechanics, most of which revolve around different kinds of special powers.
- GURPS is a popular "generic" system. That means it's meant to play a variety of genres and settings. Of course, because you're still using a particular set of rules, fantasy GURPS will feel different from D&D and GURPS in space won't be able to exactly replace d6 Star Wars. GURPS tends to focus on simulation, and the rules can sometimes be complex. One popular feature is its point-based character-building system, which lets you select all kinds of special attributes as you're creating a character. The game has a bunch of supplements for doing specific stuff, like vehicles or giant fighting robots or fantasy magic.
- Burning Wheel is a massive and dense high-fantasy RPG with a lot of little subsystems for doing various things. I haven't read it, but it feels very Tolkienesque. Characters are based around a complex system of development through "life paths". It's pretty big on giving you toolkits to create your own monsters and spells, too.
- Savage Worlds is a generic system for action-y stuff. It's lighter than D&D and pretty easy to adapt to fantasy stuff. I'm having trouble coming up with ways to describe it since it is, well, pretty generic.
-- Alex
