What's a noncritically acclaimed RPG that you like?

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It's been my go-to fantasy RPG for going on six years (and was really my gateway into classless, level-less games), but Magic World is one of the best, ugliest RPGs I've ever owned or played. Of course the system itself is pretty acclaimed (The old Stormbringer/Elric! rules), but this is an ugly duckling if you ever saw one. The art is pretty all over the place, there are tons of typos and errata (especially in the printed version) and the layout is ugly as sin. But it has everything I ever needed to finally grok the toolkit approach I saw in books like Mythras and the BRP "Big Gold Book."

My tastes have expanded to wanting to finally run Mythras, but without Magic World I'm not sure I would have grokked what I was supposed to be doing with it.
 
I’ll sub “critical acclaim” for popular acclaim because let’s face it — out hobby doesn’t even have proper channels for critics, let alone a measuring stick for critical acclaim.


AD&D 2e seems to be the "black sheep" of the D&D family...or at least it was before 4e came along...and I prefer it to everything except *maybe* 5e.

AD&D2 will always hold a special place in my heart, even if I was always more of a BECMI/RC person. It was the dominant edition of my early hobbyist days and the art of Elmore, Easley, Caldwell and Parkinson painted the landscape of my early teen imagination.

Other than that, I’ll cast a vote for the two red-headed stepchildren of Palladium, Ninjas & Superspies and Heroes Unlimited. Each their own brand of crazy. Love both.
 
It's been my go-to fantasy RPG for going on six years (and was really my gateway into classless, level-less games), but Magic World is one of the best, ugliest RPGs I've ever owned or played. Of course the system itself is pretty acclaimed (The old Stormbringer/Elric! rules), but this is an ugly duckling if you ever saw one. The art is pretty all over the place, there are tons of typos and errata (especially in the printed version) and the layout is ugly as sin. But it has everything I ever needed to finally grok the toolkit approach I saw in books like Mythras and the BRP "Big Gold Book."

My tastes have expanded to wanting to finally run Mythras, but without Magic World I'm not sure I would have grokked what I was supposed to be doing with it.

I'd love Chaosium to hire someone really competent to go through and work on the layout, typos and errors. Add some art and clean up some of the rules for the BRP Gold Book and the other books like Magic World. Who do I have to sacrifice to Arioch to make this happen?
 
I’ll sub “critical acclaim” for popular acclaim because let’s face it — out hobby doesn’t even have proper channels for critics, let alone a measuring stick for critical acclaim.




AD&D2 will always hold a special place in my heart, even if I was always more of a BECMI/RC person. It was the dominant edition of my early hobbyist days and the art of Elmore, Easley, Caldwell and Parkinson painted the landscape of my early teen imagination.

Other than that, I’ll cast a vote for the two red-headed stepchildren of Palladium, Ninjas & Superspies and Heroes Unlimited. Each their own brand of crazy. Love both.
Don't forget Beyond the Supernatural in Palladium's red-headed stepchildren that are lovably crazy. :grin:
 
Don't forget Beyond the Supernatural in Palladium's red-headed stepchildren that are lovably crazy. :grin:
Can’t extend this courtesy to BtS because their brand of crazy — giving PCs a spell list with Fireball (and other flashy spells) on it, and no reason not to cast them in broad daylight — was quite the dealbreaker for me. But N&S is dated, misinformed and borderline racist. and HU boasts a plethora of conflicting subsystems as well as classes and levels, so what do I know.
 
I agree that Fudge was an overlooked gem, and once the core mechanic had been lifted to Fate, then Fudge kept on being overlooked. Occasionally shows up here and there, such as The Princess Bride rpg, but nothing major. It's a shame, as it was such a simple rules-lite mechanic - the iconic Success Ladder, and Health Levels - any other abilities are determined specific for the setting, so it is pretty adaptable.

When I first came across Fudge on the internet it wasn't new, I bought the 10th year anniversary book of collected Fudge rulings, and it was a great toolkit, despite not having much flavour at all. I thought that because it was free and very adapatable, it would have taken off like D20 OGL did in the 00s, but it just lanquished in the background, and was very much superceedeed by Fate.

Fate's Aspects are great, and Fate Core keeps the the Character Aspects to a reasonable number (unlike the previous edition of FATE)
However Fate's Aspects and Stress/Consequences do take time to get one's head around, whereas the Fate core resolution mechanic, essientially the Fudge success ladder, is clean and simple. In many ways just playing Fudge is less mentally draining than what Fate asks of someone at times.

These days PbtA is starting to fill that same niche, so I don't think we'll be seeing much more from Fudge, which is a shame, given it's versatility.

Also, mentioned by someone earlier this thread, The Window was an indie game that never took off. I think it was free on the internet, and essientially just was an progressive success level/dice level game, it didnt have much in the way of settings, it was really just a cool core mechanic.

Same goes for RISUS, it was (is) very simple, and that is it's charm. But I would have thought that someone would have used it for an official setting by now. It's the kind of gonzo you would see in a Discworld game or if Ghostbusters got remade, or a teen spooky investigation game or something loose like that.

Ewen Cluny and Amy Veeres did a solid hack/retroclone of Ghostbusters, which is the basis of Risus, called Spooktacular.
 
Alma Mater. There's a good time in there somewhere, I just know it.
Agreed (so there's two of us apparently).

It needs some serious streamlining and there's some stuff in there that really hasn't aged well (the rape rules being a glaring example) but at its core I think the idea of playing through five years of school is excellent and there's a lot worth salvaging.
Wow, I never knew this. It should be perfect for Ghostbusters. Gonna check it out tonight!
It's really good. Somewhere between a straight retroclone and a reworking. Converting Ghostbusters adventures to it is really easy as well.
 
Can’t extend this courtesy to BtS because their brand of crazy — giving PCs a spell list with Fireball (and other flashy spells) on it, and no reason not to cast them in broad daylight — was quite the dealbreaker for me. But N&S is dated, misinformed and borderline racist. and HU boasts a plethora of conflicting subsystems as well as classes and levels, so what do I know.
I had to go look it up, because I had thought that the Arcanist couldn't just pop off spells without massive expenditures of PPE or else taking time to perform a ritual, but I was wrong. 5PPE for an "Energy Bolt" and 7PPE for a "Fire Bolt" are both well within a starting Arcanist's store of PPE. Yeesh.

But I really enjoyed the various Psychic Character Classes, and the one time I ran it, the Nega-Psychic was hillarious.

Edit: The entire shtick of "Victor Lazlo, renowned Parapsychologist" struck me funny as well, considering how much I like Casablanca.
 
Come to think of it, I loved, loved, loved Bureau 13 and Fringeworthy, and Incursion, too, to a lesser degree. Was never mad enough to actually play them, mind, but loved the premise and basic arrangement of the settings in all their simple, arcadian splendour. Complete bonkers, but who cares?

ETA: Not sure about Bureau 13, it did win an award, but just for the cover, IIRC.
 
I am a huge fan of Cthulhutech, which has become reviled by certain segments of the hobby. The core concept - Cthulhu meets Robotech - despite being a simple mash up is very well done in tone, visual depiction, and setting.

I also liked how the mecha scale rules are based around the personal scale rules allowing for seamless transition between personal drama and mecha combat. It also doesn't get lost in minutiae of mecha construction as most other mecha RPGs do and which would be in conflict with the genre.
 
I am a huge fan of Cthulhutech, which has become reviled by certain segments of the hobby. The core concept - Cthulhu meets Robotech - despite being a simple mash up is very well done in tone, visual depiction, and setting.

I also liked how the mecha scale rules are based around the personal scale rules allowing for seamless transition between personal drama and mecha combat. It also doesn't get lost in minutiae of mecha construction as most other mecha RPGs do and which would be in conflict with the genre.
I don't like the mechanics much but I think the actual setting is fine. It is clearly ripped off from like 80 different things and slapped together with tape, but I thought it was fun. Also the art is fantastic.

(Also it is kind of wonky in that it is clear that the way to run the game is really to run all of one "type" of character rather than having a mixed party, but it never feels like they explicitly point that out. It's like if WoD released their entire line in one book and didn't point out that "hey this game was kind of meant for you to play all vampires or werewolves or wraiths, not all at the same time").
 
I think the mechanics are better than it gets credit for for the reasons said. Essentially, its a White Wolf style system for an RPG that focusses on superpowered dark urban fantasy with mecha. Its a pretty unique take and one that I consider to be very well fit. The system could have tightened further and this shows more with age, but its pretty good for a first time publishing team of 2.

I also personally liked the fact that the game came with PCs that had power of different tiers in it, rather than each PC type being separated like in WoD. In my experience, there is really only two tiers with Tagers being a league above mortals. My favourite campaign saw a mix of nearly every other type of PC - sorcerers, parapsychics, PA pilots, skilled warriors, scientists and researchers. The GM had to be mindful of choices made with the characters, but it worked well and allowed for a wider lens of certain drama and action that was reminiscent of the RPG's underlying inspirations. In Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Robotech etc, you often have a diverse cast and the story focus is usually broader as well - mixing action, personal drama, esoteric weirdness, military politics etc.
 
Cthulhutech was an RPGnet Darling for a little while back when it first came out - what happened that it fell out of favour?
 
Cthulhutech was an RPGnet Darling for a little while back when it first came out - what happened that it fell out of favour?
I don't think it was ever an RPGnet Darling. It was always met with vocal and heated dissenters from the get go, though there were a few fans who did talk about it there in the early days.
 
Not sure what constitutes as a 'non-critically acclaimed' rpg, but I must say that I am getting quite interested in 7th Sea 2E these days.
From what I can see, 7th Sea 2E seems like it's good at what it's trying to do, which is presenting a very pulpy setting with a lot of narrative player-agency.
The game mechanics seem to suit the setting cinematic flavour quite well, and I can see some fun sessions ahead with it.
 
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Just a play on the title of the other thread to mean "unpopular" or "generally unknown"
Hmmm I'm not sure whether 7th Sea fits here or not...

I have seen the 7th Sea 2E core book, no supplements, just the core book in my local gaming store. So it doesn't feel entirely unknown, especially for those of us who remember the previous edition on the shelves in the early 2000s. It kind of is 'generally unknown' in many rpg store-crowds, but doesn't feel 'indie' enough to a rpg forum-crowd like us. Now that it is being published by Chaosium, it may become a little more prolific. So probably not the kind of titles we are talking about in this thread.

(ADDIT: BTW I couldn't find a pre-existing thread specifically regarding 7th Sea - so I just started a brand new one - it's linked here for those who may want to banter about this game) :thumbsup:
 
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Cthulhutech was an RPGnet Darling for a little while back when it first came out - what happened that it fell out of favour?

Very poor writing. Off the top of my head one scenario was to auto-end in a TPK, in a “Well, this entire adventure was pointless” kind of way.

Another was tied to the metaplot, with the bad guy casting the invulnerability spell the game had, and PCs were to stand around instead of using any of the ways the spell could be beaten, or just following him until it wore off, then killing him.

One character was supposed to be taken seriously, but had a familiar that was all but called Slimer from Ghostbusters.

An NPC was introduced at one point the players had to obey if they wanted to keep their PCs in the game. Not only did she break rules of common sense and make one major faction seem a bunch of idiots, but she was a poster child that you were to be able to mix the various character types together.

One bit of fiction had a character that we were clearly supposed to sympathize with due to her psychic powers, ala the X-Men, but between her kill count of accidental murders and those she killed because they MIGHT be a problem you wanted her executed for the good of humanity, again ala the X-Men.

Again, that’s just off the top of my head. The sad thing is I was pumped for the game after reading the promotional timeline released years before the actual game and what was published.
 
I think Trailblazer was the best of the 3E successors. Actually simplifies some of its structures instead of just piling on additional goodies like the eerily similarly named big competitor.

Traveller New Era was my favorite official Traveller game. I liked the post-cataclysmic background, the system seemed fun enough for some military action and I really liked the Fire, Fusion & Steel supplement about tech covering all kinds of tech levels, alternative drives and even gun design -- although I remember that after a lot of calculations I ended up with the same damage, due to the granularity of the system. Well, at least I could use proper units for that.

I'm also a huge MasterBook fan. Has the fun card-based initiative system from Torg, a logarithmic core table that makes it easy to cover a wide spread of abilities, damage etc., and 2d10 is a under-appreciated task resolution mechanic. But these days it's sadly as dead as Fuzion.
 
Traveller New Era was my favorite official Traveller game. I liked the post-cataclysmic background, the system seemed fun enough for some military action and I really liked the Fire, Fusion & Steel supplement about tech covering all kinds of tech levels, alternative drives and even gun design -- although I remember that after a lot of calculations I ended up with the same damage, due to the granularity of the system. Well, at least I could use proper units for that.
The 'trick' to gun design if you wanted clearly different guns was to design backwards from whichever stat you wanted to differentiate on (damage, recoil, etc.), and to be willing to do some iteration. It's much easier these days with Excel, etc. than it was back in the early 90s when you'd almost certainly be limited to pencil and paper.
 
All the talk of AD&D 2e reminds me that I really liked Buck Rogers XXVc. Neat transhuman setting, very functional implementation of second edition AD&D.

I liked Traveller the New Era and was really disappointed when Dangerous Journeys wasn't a GDW House Rules fantasy game. My c21+ system is kind of a meeting of Twilight 2000 and Mutant Chronicles mechanics and I've noodled around with the idea of doing an sf version. The tech rules wouldn't be anywhere near Fire Fusion and Steel's technical detail. I already did something like that for Galaxies In Shadow, in fact, one of the reasons I went percentile for it is that I wanted the granularity to reflect small differences in weapons.
 
It's much easier these days with Excel, etc. than it was back in the early 90s when you'd almost certainly be limited to pencil and paper.
Hmm, most RPG nerds I knew back then were quite heavily into computers, too, so it wouldn't have been that unlikely that they had some version of Excel accessible. My age bracket back then just wasn't that into it, as we didn't (yet) use it for work and just for "fun", Excel would be a weird candidate.
But I remember the local comic shop owners using Microsoft Works for DOS for their campaign a lot (that would be yet another non-acclaimed game, but a German one). Also, BASIC. On the other hand, a lot of gun fiddling was about recreating existing ones.

I liked Traveller the New Era and was really disappointed when Dangerous Journeys wasn't a GDW House Rules fantasy game.
Oh wow, that would've been an interesting thing. The not-quite-earth setting plus GWD's solid combat mechanics, without all that Gygaxian weirdness and let's-avoid-copyright-issues terms and acronyms. What's a good GDW source of magic?

Has D&D 3.0 been mentioned already? ;)
 
I liked Traveller the New Era and was really disappointed when Dangerous Journeys wasn't a GDW House Rules fantasy game.

My understanding was the DJ rules were hoped to be the new house rules for GDW. I believe it was in Journeys that they mentioned they were planning to release a modern-day horror game with the same ruleset.
 
My understanding was the DJ rules were hoped to be the new house rules for GDW. I believe it was in Journeys that they mentioned they were planning to release a modern-day horror game with the same ruleset.
The horror rules were also to be by Gygax, and in fact he wanted to do them first, but it was thought that a fantasy game would sell better and establish the system more effectively. GDW was the publisher, not the developer, so I very much doubt they were intending to switch to the DJ system, especially considering how different it was from their in-house ones.
 
My understanding was the DJ rules were hoped to be the new house rules for GDW. I believe it was in Journeys that they mentioned they were planning to release a modern-day horror game with the same ruleset.
Wow. Just wow.

I don't recall much about the Dangerous Journey's rules. I never owned a copy. The only time I ever looked at them was in the comic store that was selling copies 30 years ago. My recollection is they were AD&D1e, but clunkier and less useable and written in solid coke fueled high-Gygaxian.

So, my view is that would have been an absolute trainwreck.
 
My recollection is they were AD&D1e, but clunkier and less useable and written in solid coke fueled high-Gygaxian.
Sounds about right to me. Between old bad tropes like "ring mail" and new rule terms like "STEEP", "BUC", "K/S", it was quite hard to follow. I did like one of the novels, though.
 
I'd love Chaosium to hire someone really competent to go through and work on the layout, typos and errors. Add some art and clean up some of the rules for the BRP Gold Book and the other books like Magic World. Who do I have to sacrifice to Arioch to make this happen?
I wouldn't get my hopes up. There seems little "real" love for either Magic World or the Big GOld Book at Chaosium. I can understand that, they weren't big sellers though Magic World could have been.
 
Wow. Just wow.

I don't recall much about the Dangerous Journey's rules. I never owned a copy. The only time I ever looked at them was in the comic store that was selling copies 30 years ago. My recollection is they were AD&D1e, but clunkier and less useable and written in solid coke fueled high-Gygaxian.

So, my view is that would have been an absolute trainwreck.

I just checked, and according to issue three of Journeys it was called Unhallowed, and had been run, though just with one of his sons or at cons at well is a little murky.

The modern horror game fan in me wonders what it was like in those sessions.
 
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I wouldn't get my hopes up. There seems little "real" love for either Magic World or the Big GOld Book at Chaosium. I can understand that, they weren't big sellers though Magic World could have been.
I think this is the time to mention that there's a supplement for Mongoose's Legend - which means Mythras compatible - called Blood Magic, which covers demon summoning...:devil:
 
I don't like the mechanics much but I think the actual setting is fine. It is clearly ripped off from like 80 different things and slapped together with tape, but I thought it was fun. Also the art is fantastic.

(Also it is kind of wonky in that it is clear that the way to run the game is really to run all of one "type" of character rather than having a mixed party, but it never feels like they explicitly point that out. It's like if WoD released their entire line in one book and didn't point out that "hey this game was kind of meant for you to play all vampires or werewolves or wraiths, not all at the same time").
Like them being in different books is stopping anyone...:grin:
 
How anyone could think Dangerous Journeys was like D&D is beyond me. It's a percentile based rpg with three attribute tiers (27 attributes in total IRRC) where professions were skill packages that added points to one attribute to get skill totals. Damages were in numbers of dice. Armour absorbed damage and had a block of damage type verses hit location vitality. Magic practicioners would often know hundreds of spells which they cast with spell points. So, in other words, deliberately nothing like D&D. The stat blocks dwarfed even D&D3 e which I think was about the peak for D&D.
 
I can understand that, they weren't big sellers though Magic World could have been

Yeah. I can't help but think the horrible production values of the otherwise really good book ended up hurting Magic World in particular. You seem to occasionally find people asking things like, "I really like [BRP|Runequest|Mythras] but I want something a little more [heroic|action-driven]". And the appropriate response is almost always, "there's this game called Magic World"...
 
I wouldn't get my hopes up. There seems little "real" love for either Magic World or the Big GOld Book at Chaosium. I can understand that, they weren't big sellers though Magic World could have been.
At this point I'd just as soon nu-Chaosium leave them alone... I'll take goofy-toothed Magic World over whatever 'improvements' they'd be inclined to make.
 
Very poor writing. Off the top of my head one scenario was to auto-end in a TPK, in a “Well, this entire adventure was pointless” kind of way.

The adventures were not great throughout the series, which again goes back to it being the publishers first game.

The setting books were mostly good though. Vade Mecum, the companion sourcebook is one of the best supplements for any RPG ever IMO. You just needed to run the game inspired by the setting material rather than rely on running the metaplot scenarios. A lesson I had already learned from being a gamer in the 90s :smile:
 
How anyone could think Dangerous Journeys was like D&D is beyond me. It's a percentile based rpg with three attribute tiers (27 attributes in total IRRC) where professions were skill packages that added points to one attribute to get skill totals. Damages were in numbers of dice. Armour absorbed damage and had a block of damage type verses hit location vitality. Magic practicioners would often know hundreds of spells which they cast with spell points. So, in other words, deliberately nothing like D&D. The stat blocks dwarfed even D&D3 e which I think was about the peak for D&D.

I apologize. I genuinely wasn't trying to crap on the thread nor was I trying to crap on your enthusiasm for it.
 
How anyone could think Dangerous Journeys was like D&D is beyond me. It's a percentile based rpg with three attribute tiers (27 attributes in total IRRC) where professions were skill packages that added points to one attribute to get skill totals. Damages were in numbers of dice. Armour absorbed damage and had a block of damage type verses hit location vitality. Magic practicioners would often know hundreds of spells which they cast with spell points. So, in other words, deliberately nothing like D&D. The stat blocks dwarfed even D&D3 e which I think was about the peak for D&D.
But it had tons of polearms with nearly identical stats! So it must be the same as D&D. As I recall, most weapons were actually different enough from one and another that which you used made a difference because of the various special effects, initiative ratings, etc.

Also unlike D&D of the time (or most later versions for that matter) your social class mattered a lot, and a good many professions were built around social skills, not combat or adventuring. No levels or anything much like them either.

Every so often I regret having swapped away my copy of Mythus many years back.
 
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