Favorite PNP RPG systems

What's your favorite PNP RPG system and why?

I've really only played 5E and the FFG 40K system and I'm looking to try branching out some time when I find the time.

Very interested in the Powered by the Apocalypse system...supposed to be rules-light and heavily focused on the narrative, which appeals to me strongly. Also has a lot of rules to make GMing fairly easy with little overhead work. Be curious to hear anyone's experiences with that system, but really just interested to hear what systems people like and why.

Delta Green

Overall it's simplified Call of Cthulhu. It's a percentile system so it's not a super hard jump from the FFG 40k games I've been playing. It's much more narrative driven but still retains a modicum of crunch. The system is built around horror and its effect on a character's psyche but those can be easily be discarded or changed. The lack of gear porn is also nice. It has generic weapons and some specific equipment but we're not talking FFG 40k or Shadowrun levels of stuff. It's nice and refined.

It's the system (with tweeks) I'm using for my setting Retrograde.

That's good. Maybe it was just the rulebook I have but I have an older edition of call of Cthulhu and the rules are NOT super easy to pick up.

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I've played plenty of good and interesting systems, or at least tried them before my group decided to move on. Anything in particular you're interested in?

But in terms of military RPGs its "Recon" without a single doubt in my heart. Easy to play and lethal as a fire fight should be. There are a cut parts that needs to be patched and some pieces that needs to get a better sealing, but its really cool system where a single bullet can take your character from full health to full death, so tactics, team work, quick thinking and not getting caught in ambushes are really important.

Basic system is set in the Vietnam War, with support for real or fictional the Cold War conflicts of the 60s and 70s but it shouldn't take overtly much work to bring the game backwards, onwards or out into space if you'd like some sci-fi.

I really recommend people to check out this system.

Gurkhal wrote:

I've played plenty of good and interesting systems, or at least tried them before my group decided to move on. Anything in particular you're interested in?

But in terms of military RPGs its "Recon" without a single doubt in my heart. Easy to play and lethal as a fire fight should be. There are a cut parts that needs to be patched and some pieces that needs to get a better sealing, but its  really cool system where a single bullet can take your character from full health to full death, so tactics, team work, quick thinking and not getting caught in ambushes are really important.

Basic system is set in the Vietnam War, with support for real or fictional the Cold War conflicts of the 60s and 70s but it shouldn't take overtly much work to bring the game backwards, onwards or out into space if you'd like some sci-fi.

I really recommend people to check out this system.

Have you checked out Patrol - A Vietnam Roleplaying Game? It's a spiritual successor to Recon.

Solodice wrote:

Gurkhal wrote:

I've played plenty of good and interesting systems, or at least tried them before my group decided to move on. Anything in particular you're interested in?

But in terms of military RPGs its "Recon" without a single doubt in my heart. Easy to play and lethal as a fire fight should be. There are a cut parts that needs to be patched and some pieces that needs to get a better sealing, but its  really cool system where a single bullet can take your character from full health to full death, so tactics, team work, quick thinking and not getting caught in ambushes are really important.

Basic system is set in the Vietnam War, with support for real or fictional the Cold War conflicts of the 60s and 70s but it shouldn't take overtly much work to bring the game backwards, onwards or out into space if you'd like some sci-fi.

I really recommend people to check out this system.

Have you checked out Patrol - A Vietnam Roleplaying Game? It's a spiritual successor to Recon.

Not yet, but will do in a very near future.

I have now come into possession of the "Patrol" book and from what little I've read so far it looks promesing. Promesing enought that I am considering the possibility to attempt to run a campaign with it and see where it goes. May be something else than Vietnam but not sure of what it should be instead.

Gurkhal wrote:

May be something else than Vietnam but not sure of what it should be instead.

Well the whole Cold War had other conflicts that weren't Vietnam.

- Suez Crisis (1956)
- Six Day War (1967)
- Yom Kippur War (1972)
- Algerian War (1954-1962)*
- Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974)*
- Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989)*
- Rhodesian Bush War (1964-1979)*
- South African Border War/Angola Bush War (1966-1990)*
- Falklands War (1982)

* Have similarities to the Vietnam War so they might be easier to use.

In a more fictional realm you can go for a Cold War gone hot (ie. Team Yankee, World in Conflict). Maybe even a Red Dawn scenario.

Post Cold War you have the two Chechen Wars, Gulf War 1, Gulf War 2, Iraq occupation, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine. Or come out of left field and something totally unique!

Solodice wrote:

Gurkhal wrote:

May be something else than Vietnam but not sure of what it should be instead.

Well the whole Cold War had other conflicts that weren't Vietnam.

- Suez Crisis (1956)
- Six Day War (1967)
- Yom Kippur War (1972)
- Algerian War (1954-1962)*
- Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974)*
- Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989)*
- Rhodesian Bush War (1964-1979)*
- South African Border War/Angola Bush War (1966-1990)*
- Falklands War (1982)

* Have similarities to the Vietnam War so they might be easier to use.

In a more fictional realm you can go for a Cold War gone hot (ie. Team Yankee, World in Conflict). Maybe even a Red Dawn scenario.

Post Cold War you have the two Chechen Wars, Gulf War 1, Gulf War 2, Iraq occupation, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine. Or come out of left field and something totally unique!

All good and cool ideas. But I feel that the Cold War isn't what really interests me so much. So here I am thinking about pushing the game backwards before the Cold War, may run a test scenario with some WW2 scenario, or perhaps even a Great War scenario? I've got some ideas for what could be interesting, or at least what I could propose to the group.

EDITED: Or maybe I'll just apply the screws and force arm them to play it?

Gurkhal wrote:

All good and cool ideas. But I feel that the Cold War isn't what really interests me so much. So here I am thinking about pushing the game backwards before the Cold War, may run a test scenario with some WW2 scenario, or perhaps even a Great War scenario? I've got some ideas for what could be interesting, or at least what I could propose to the group.

WW1 or WW2 work (not my cup of tea as the moral ambiguity of those conflicts is a little too black and white and I feel that hampers RP). If you want some left field stuff for WW2 I suggest looking into:

Sacred Band/Sacred Squadron
OSS operations
Merrill's Marauders
Winter War
Austrailia's Papua New Guinea Campaign

Solodice wrote:

Gurkhal wrote:

All good and cool ideas. But I feel that the Cold War isn't what really interests me so much. So here I am thinking about pushing the game backwards before the Cold War, may run a test scenario with some WW2 scenario, or perhaps even a Great War scenario? I've got some ideas for what could be interesting, or at least what I could propose to the group.

WW1 or WW2 work (not my cup of tea as the moral ambiguity of those conflicts is a little too black and white and I feel that hampers RP). If you want some left field stuff for WW2 I suggest looking into:

Sacred Band/Sacred Squadron
OSS operations
Merrill's Marauders
Winter War
Austrailia's Papua New Guinea Campaign

Well, I agree that the WW2 is very black-and-white in regards to the two sides involved. Still I have found that you can have some pretty RP within a single side's army and with the civilians if you put effort into it. But its true that from my perspective it can become a bit like a piece of "Heroic Heroes using Massive and Glorious Violence to save the World!" movie without much dept to it. In my opinion the best war games and movies do not take a flattering view to war or violence. Still running and RPG campaign with a "Band of Brothers" inspiration could be fun. If so it might be best to tell the story of a single regiment of British soldiers across the two world wars and see where that leads us, as Britain is kind of known from popular culture, there's much information out there about the British army and everybody in the group knows English so we can pronounce the names relatively correctly and serparate them from each other. Could also run the players across the Boer War for some extra fun with sharpshooters, which they really love from their experiences in Only War.

Good suggestions though and in particular I like the idea of the Winter War. That could even be expanded as a campaign about Finland's four 20th century wars (Civil War, Winter War, Continuation War, Lapland War). This would also have the advantage of it being mostly focused on infantry units with limited support from air power or armoured vehicles, to my knowledge.

After playing dnd since 3.5, I can say 5e is the most fluid and easy to understand. It also seems less prone to power gaming than 3.5.

FFG's system is fun, but the lack of a unified system for all the games leads to conflicts and general chaos. Things like talent descriptions were constantly changed from game to game.

FFG's star wars system confuses me. I think it may be because my brain is just one step shy of overload status anymore and it was a poor time to learn a new system.

Savage worlds is the most open out of all of them. There are several established worlds and it's not too hard to create your own (like I did with AT-43 and Inq did with DW) The system is light on crunch, but not too much.

Shaodw run.....I wanted this to work, after trying to run a started game I have a few things to sayL
1-this game is not a good pbp system.
2-dont run an adventure with characters not premade for it, they might be bored.
3-the tech crunch requires a massive understanding

Wrath and glory, Tests are done similar to shadowrun with dice pools instead of a single roll. I think these kind of games are not good for a pbp setting. It also had a wrath and glory pools, which players are supposed to constantly be taking and adding to. This requires some book keeping.
The ability to give players some leeway on determining what thier "fumble" rolls actually do is a novel concept.
Im keen to give this one a good try, but Im unable to run it currently.

https://www.ironswornrpg.com/

Very interested in this game. Probably gonna try it out soon since it's free. Seems like it could be hacked to fit warhammer fantasy if anyone wanted as well

Sylphilis wrote:

Shaodw run.....I wanted this to work, after trying to run a started game I have a few things to sayL
1-this game is not a good pbp system.
2-dont run an adventure with characters not premade for it, they might be bored.
3-the tech crunch requires a massive understanding

Shadowrun is a fun setting but do the rules really let it down. I don't think crunch in a game is bad but implementation is key and Shadowrun fails in a few areas. Hacking is a game within a game that detracts from the main game

The gear porn I don't find to troublesome if you're using chummer (character building program). If not... oh boy.

I think it can work as a PbP but it needs work and it isn't a easy plug and play RPG in general (making it hard in general for a PbP).

One game I would like to test as a PbP would be The Spire. It's light on crunch, has a baller urban fantasy setting, and has some of the most unique classes/abilities in any RPG I've seen.

Delta green sounds cool. I have to check out the rulebook

Sylphilis wrote:

After playing dnd since 3.5, I can say 5e is the most fluid and easy to understand. It also seems less prone to power gaming than 3.5.

FFG's system is fun, but the lack of a unified system for all the games leads to conflicts and general chaos. Things like talent descriptions were constantly changed from game to game.

FFG's star wars system confuses me. I think it may be because my brain is just one step shy of overload status anymore and it was a poor time to learn a new system.

I feel you on FFG's 40k line being pretty confusing.

I'm also not crazy about their SW system, anything with unique dice is kind of a hassle, harder for my friends to just drop in and play because you have to buy a certain amount of dice. Also feel like it would be easy enough to learn if I played regularly, but as an adult the absolute most often I can get a group together to game is biweekly - and even that's iffy. So every time we played it, I felt like I was kind of starting from square one to learn the iconography of the dice. Sort of takes the excitement out of dice rolling when I'm constantly thinking "okay, so what do these dice results mean again?" I also felt like you constantly got "complications" with successes and I kind of prefer the cut and dry results of typical dice rolls, i.e. you succeed or you fail. I felt like most rolls resulted in mixed results.

I definitely enjoy 5e and don't think I would ever want to play a crunchier version of DND. Never played any other edition, but.