What is your favorite game system?

Once per week we go behind the bar at Apathy Games and discuss gaming in more personal terms and ask you to respond. The best response will be featured the following week.

By the time you’ve started reading a blog about Savage Worlds, you’ve probably been around the roleplaying block and played your share of systems. I know I have. The truth is, there is no one ultimate system. We all know that. In the end, there is only the best system to suit your current needs.

But, even so, there are times when you see a core mechanic and something inside you screams, “Yes! That’s how it works!”. For me, that was Shadowrun Fourth Edition.

It’s a rather simple dice pool system. Attributes, Skills, Augmentations, and modifiers are all measured by the number of dice they add to your pool. You then roll them all, and every die that rolls five or higher is a hit. The difficulty of tasks is measured in the number of hits you need.

The reason I love it, other than the satisfaction of rolling a fistful of dice, is how every little edge your character has provides an additional opportunity for success. Like every skill you learn is a little soldier and the task is an enemy. The more soldiers you have, the more likely it is that one of them will kill the filthy bastard.

It’s a simple mechanic, but a complex system. Everything has a mechanical effect, however small. I love this, but it’s also why the system isn’t right for every game. Also, it’s very deadly. Shadowrun characters are often described as eggshells with hammers. It’s style of play I like, but not always.

Now Your Turn:  What is your favorite game system?

Leave your story in the comments, and next week we’ll post the best story. If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in a future Behind the Bar, let us know.

Last Weeks Winner is: Theron

The Questions was, “If you could game with any historical figure, who would it be?”, to which he wrote:

Gary Gygax and HG Welles, the father and grandfather of our noble hobby.

Theron makes a great point.  I would love to have had a chance to game with Gygax.  It’s still possible I suppose, and necromancy is fitting with the game.  Something to think on.

  • 77IM

    Honestly, I don’t know that I have one.

    My current go-to game is Savage Worlds as it suits my current needs extremely well, but as a system it has a ton of rough edges and I constantly find myself tweaking minor issues and explaining to players, “Yeah, that rule doesn’t make much sense but it’s, uh, abstract.”

    The opposite is Mutants and Masterminds (2nd Edition — the jury is still out on 3rd Edition). It’s an extremely elegant, comprehensive and flexible rules system, requiring almost no house rules, and being both balanced and realistic (at least, it can easily be realistic if you run it that way). So why am I playing SW and not M&M? Mostly, because M&M requires more math (I am bad at math and don’t even want to do “attribute + skill” during character creation).

    For nostalgia, the old DC Heroes (MEGS) system — even more elegant than M&M, requiring even more math — which I played throughout high school. It was one of the earliest effect-based systems and had a cool dice mechanic, but I don’t miss having to consult two tables for every attack or look up powers organized into semi-arbitrary categories.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/2QBEX7Z3XUYMBLAVEL3WZQOB4Q David

    My favorite game system of all time is EarthDawn. I played EarthDawn almost exclusively from 1994-2002. While some people I have known found the system odd and difficult to learn, EarthDawn unleashed my creativity.

    Instead of classes, EarthDawn uses Disciplines, and the core abilities of the Disciplines are embodied in Talents. These talents are magical in nature, so that every character, in effect, is magical. Magical powers is no longer restricted to those who cast spells.

    Each Discipline is also an outlook and a way of life. An Archer is not merely someone who wields a missile weapon, but someone who thinks of life in terms of targets and the best way to reach them.

    Magic items are not merely things that have powers, but complex patterns of powers that characters unlock by studying the item, gaining knowledge of it, and perhaps by performing deeds.

    These things, and others, are embedded into the game. Even writing this, it can be hard to describe why the game has such an appeal to me. But I can say this: everything I do and create in roleplaying, even now that I seldom play EarthDawn, is influenced by the years I played this game. All of the writing I do for White Haired Man in heavily indebted to EarthDawn, and I’m sure someone experienced with EarthDawn would notice this.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SPQXWTLA25TLEZJYUP4KJINOUY/blog 700R4 Transmission

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