Monday, July 9, 2012

Which Game System is Best?

After having played D&D for the better part of a decade our group was getting a bit jaded with 3.5, and decided to try 4E when it was released. At first it was fun, then it became boring - mechanically.And then the errata and then some more errata and then, just when you thought it was safe, more errata. It seemed that whenever you went into the character builder to level up your PC, some cool ability, or magic item (not that there were all that many worth having!) didn't work the way it used too and your PC was less effective than before. Whether this was due to some poor design choices early on or whatever who knows. Certainly there appeared a lack of external play testing.

Anyhow, we moved on. I've always been a fan of Micheal Moorcock and had wanted to play Dragon Lords of Melnibone since I purchased it way back in about 2000, when we were just starting to play 3.0E. Chaosium advertised their D100 version Elric! (the latest incarnation of Stormbringer at the time) in the back of the book - why I didn't start checking that game and system out earlier I'll never know and always regret. So, we move to the present and we're looking for another FRPG to play. One of the guys starts a Warhammer FRP campaign, which was fun, but personally I didn't like the careers that much. I looked at BRP - mainly due to the Moorcock thing and then discovered RunequestII by Mongoose and subsequently the Elric of Melnibone RPG (see my other post). We also played a few games of Savage Worlds, which while I'm not overly keen on the mechanics, certainly lives up to its premise of fast, furious and fun! Recently I've taken a look at the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG and ran the 0-level adventure in the book. Bloody good fun! Would I like to use it as my goto game? Probably not.

The thing is, that after being exposed to D100 based games, D20 and other level based games just don't do it for me anymore. The mechanics couldn't be simpler, while providing a high level of complexity - if you want it. It is a very robust mechanic and I can understand why it is very popular, apart from having a fling with the DCC game, Runequest in one version or another will be what I run from now on.

But which system is best?

To be honest I don't think that question can be answered, at least not definitively. It is entirely a matter of preference. I played in a Pathfinder game recently and had a blast, but I still prefer D100. At the end of the day, it comes down to what you enjoy playing, your groups 'style' and your GM.

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