Pen and paper RPG - suggestions

Ok, so my board & video game group is interested in dipping its collective toe into the pen & paper RPG pool. A long time ago, in a country far, far away I GM'd first edition AD&D and a few other RPGs (Traveler and Paranoia spring to mind), but I'm pretty out of touch with the current crop.

Anyone have any good suggestions? D&D is the obvious choice, but how does it compare to what else is available these days? We're definitely not wed to the classical fantasy setting. There's minimal pen & paper experience across the group, so preferably a relatively light rule set to ease us in. We're also probably not at the smelly hippy end of the pool.

I played Pathfinder which is pretty much D&D. Some people like it more than the newest edition of D&D. I haven't played the newest D&D so I'm not sure how it compares to that.

DnD 5th edition is very approachable in my opinion. I was a big advocate of DnD 3.5e and Pathfinder for years, but found that those systems can be cumbersome at times. DnD 5e streamlines a lot of the mechanics that gave me fits in 3.5e.

DnD aside, there are a couple of other systems that I think are very fun and easy to learn. Also, the cost of entry for these systems are pretty minimal.

1. Savage Worlds - Great adaptable system that can cover a wide array of genres, not just fantasy, and having an exploding dice mechanic makes for some great moments at the game table.

2. Fate Core - This is a great system if you're not as concerned about mechanics and have a group that would rather have a system that lends itself to collaborative storytelling.

3. Dread (Note: You can buy the pdf here for $3, very cheap) - Very different RPG. This is more of a storytelling system that has a unique mechanic. There are no dice rolls. Instead, you pull blocks from a jenga tower trying not to let it fall when you encounter an in story challenge. This mechanic adds a growing tension to the game, so the system lends itself well to suspenseful and horror games.

Hope this helps!

I'm a huge fan of D&D 5E. The rules just kind of disappear and all that's left is fun.

I still play Hero Quest semi regularly and it's great, especially if you use a combination of standard and advanced rules to up the challenge and keep the players on their toes. Also miniature furniture is awesome.

Might want to try some one-offs like Fiasco to dip your toes into the water, before investing in the time/financial expense of a larger system like D&D

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I'm a huge fan of D&D 5E. The rules just kind of disappear and all that's left is fun.

5th edition is far closer to the old-school D&D experience than 3rd or 4th editions for sure. 3rd edition can get bogged down in player-power minutia which can be overwhelming for anyone who hasn't played much and 4th edition is... well I have a hard time describing it without sounding insulting to its fans. It removed a lot of quirks but created an overly balanced, combat-oriented and sterile system. 5th edition strips the combat and tactics down a bit (just don't grapple! They still can't sort that stuff out) and adds a lot of world building flavor and character hooks.

Call of Cthulhu is another fun and simple gaming system if your group would be into the Lovecraftian horror thing. The rule set overall is really easy to just let fade into the background. Combat and anything fairly precise requires some hand-waving and improvised rulings to work OK. If the group are really sticklers for rules and consistency it might not be a great fit. It's also a cheaper buy-in than D&D.

There's a general tabletop RPG thread if you want a look at some previous discussion about this question.

D&D 5E is a solid choice, particularly if you want to D&D style dungeon crawls. Pathfinder is closest to 3.5-ish D&D. My guess is that since your last experience was with AD&D, you might actually find 5E more familiar, though I don't have the personal experience to test that out.

The hot new thing for dungeon crawling is probably Dungeon World, though its inside-out rules might be too hippy for you. Or they might click with you, since they're pretty light like you're looking for. The rules are Creative Commons licensed and freely available online, so you can judge for yourself.

Torchbearer is for people who are interested in the brutal minutia of dungeon crawls, like if you care if you are holding your torch. It's got the mechanics to make managing this simple, while keeping its gritty focus.

There are also quite a few people who are straight-up playing old versions of D&D these days, though that's not quite what you were asking for.

For non-dungeon-crawling things, there are way too many to list here. What genre grabs you? Transhuman space? Cyberpunk hackers? Dresden Files urban fantasy wizards? S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Monsters in high school? Female Soviet night bomber pilots? Rabbits? Anime stories about solving small personal problems? Playing the shopkeepers and farmers in a JRPG?

I'm a huge fan of D&D 5E and would 100% recommend it. It hits all the right D&D buttons with the added bonus of being loose, flexible, and light on rules when you need it to be.

FATE also looks pretty great.

A lot of the hippie games actually have great, simple mechanics for getting going and letting the storytelling breath. Dungeon World, for example, and all its spinoffs. That said, I'd recommend against using Burning Wheel as your toe-dipper. It's a great system, but kinda the opposite of simple.

Tanglebones wrote:

A lot of the hippie games actually have great, simple mechanics for getting going and letting the storytelling breath. Dungeon World, for example, and all its spinoffs. That said, I'd recommend against using Burning Wheel as your toe-dipper. It's a great system, but kinda the opposite of simple.

It's also kind of the opposite of what people complain about when they complain about smelly hippie games, since it has got so much delicious mechanical crunch.

It is kind of the deep end, though. To really see it shine you need to sign up for a long-term campaign.

Call of Cthulhu, D100 system so really easy to understand (I'm talking 6th here, haven't read any of 7th) and who doesn't want to go insane and/or die in a horrible manner.

Traveller - You don't have to play the game itself, just experience the character generation (where characters can die)

Thanks all for the advice! There were quite a few systems that I hadn't heard of & look really interesting.

Thinking about it, it's probably a good idea to start with a familiar setting, rather than having the group struggling to grok both the ruleset and the world of female soviet night bomber pilots, so a dungeon crawler might not be such a bad idea. Sounds like D&D5e or Pathfinder are both reasonable choices. From reviews, it also looks like they have decent starter kits.

Time to check out the Labor Day sales...

I can't recommend Numenera highly enough. It's a sci-fi fantasy game from Monte Cooke Games, and it's pretty great. The rules are pretty light, and character creation can be done very quickly. The other nice thing about characters is you get a nice little sentence that summarizes the character pretty well when you do creation. It's also a really nice system for GMs as it lets you focus on what the characters/players are doing.

Amazon has it for about $40, and the players guide is only $15 which contains everything a player would need.

mumford wrote:

I can't recommend Numenera highly enough. It's a sci-fi fantasy game from Monte Cooke Games, and it's pretty great. The rules are pretty light, and character creation can be done very quickly. The other nice thing about characters is you get a nice little sentence that summarizes the character pretty well when you do creation. It's also a really nice system for GMs as it lets you focus on what the characters/players are doing.

Amazon has it for about $40, and the players guide is only $15 which contains everything a player would need.

And it'll be the setting for the new Torment game, if a video game hook helps..

Also, I'm running D&D 5e for my home campaign and it's really good. I'll be wrapping it up early next year and probably doing Shadow of the Demon Lord for a few sessions before finding another big campaign to run.

Cod wrote:

Thanks all for the advice! There were quite a few systems that I hadn't heard of & look really interesting.

Thinking about it, it's probably a good idea to start with a familiar setting, rather than having the group struggling to grok both the ruleset and the world of female soviet night bomber pilots, so a dungeon crawler might not be such a bad idea. Sounds like D&D5e or Pathfinder are both reasonable choices. From reviews, it also looks like they have decent starter kits.

Time to check out the Labor Day sales...

I'll still urge you towards 5e over Pathfinder. Pathfinder is basically an evolution of D&D 3 which was made as a reaction to D&D 4 being so different. With that in mind it shares a lot of the rules "crunch" of its progenitor while not necessarily providing more variety at lower levels. 5th edition really hits a "sweet spot" between vague and exhaustive, both in the rules set and role-playing hooks.

I agree with imbiginjapan. I was a Pathfinder fanboy for quite some time, but have since converted to DnD 5e due to the streamlined mechanics. In my experience, DnD 5e seems a little easier on the GM as well. The cost of entry for either system is about equivalent.

Arise, thread! An update to thank you all for your suggestions....

We played the adventure in the starter kit of the Dragon Age RPG and the crowd went wild. Very popular. The group learned that bad ideas include trying to climb up a steep ravine in heavy armour and doing a solo charge without armour at a group of bad guys with throwing axes.

Now I've got one person other than me interested in GM-ing and we're going to try a few different rulesets to see what we fancy for the long term.

I think the really understandable combat/test system with the unpredictable stunt bonus was a big part of the success. Everyone grokked the system really quickly and it hands out some spectacular moments, rather than entirely depending on the creativity of new roleplayers.