Thursday, February 16, 2023

My Top 10 Non-D&D RPGs (Part I)

In a comment to a recent post, I was asked to put together a Top 10 list of my favorite non-D&D RPGs. I thought that was a good idea and today's post is the first half of that list. In putting the list together, I spent some time reflecting on which games I both liked and had played extensively over the course of my time in the hobby. Most of the results were obvious, but a handful surprised me. For this two-part post, I've kept the entries brief. However, I may return to several of them in separate posts where I talk at greater length about my experiences with these games and why I would rank them among my favorites.

Part II will appear tomorrow.

10. Gangbusters

I've always liked the idea of historical RPGs, but, in practice, they're often difficult to pull off. One of their biggest obstacles in my opinion is that players – and referees too – are often at a loss deciding precisely what to do in a past setting. That's not the case with TSR's Gangbusters. For one, it takes place during the gang wars of the USA's Prohibition Era, which naturally lends itself to something more akin to the "adventuring" found in purely fictional worlds. For another, the game's compact 64-page rules give plenty of rules and advice on how to run a campaign. Everything from police procedures to investigative journalism to criminal activities gets its due. Gangbusters is the only historical RPG I've ever played successfully for any length of time and I regularly consider trying to do so again. It's a terrific, underappreciated gem of the first decade of the hobby.

9. Fading Suns

Science fiction has always been my jam, so I don't think anyone will be surprised to see a large number of SF RPGs on this list. That said, Fading Suns is science fiction in the same way that one might call Star Wars science fiction, which is to say, it involves blasters and starships but is otherwise more of a space fantasy. That's not a criticism of Fading Suns, which makes excellent use of a number of thematic and setting elements that are right up my alley, like religion, ancient mysteries, weird technology, feudalism, and more. The game's setting has always been its main strength, since it's never had a rules system with which I was wholly comfortable. Even so, I've had a lot of fun with it over the years, having run a couple of enjoyable campaigns in the late '90s and early 2000s. I hope one day to do it again.

8. Pendragon

Pendragon is one of only a handful of RPGs I'd consider "perfect," in the sense that they perfectly marry their mechanics and subject matter. It's for this reason that the game is sometimes considered the late Greg Stafford's masterpiece and I largely agree with that judgment. Stafford managed to achieve with Pendragon something he never quite managed with RuneQuest: the creation of rules that fully immersed the player into the world – and worldview – of the game. That Pendragon's mechanics are quite simple (and mostly straightforward) makes it very easy on both players and the referee to enter a fully realized Arthurian world. I recently had the chance to play Pendragon again over the last couple of years and enjoyed myself greatly. The game remains every bit as good as I remembered its being.

Science fiction rears its head again. Traveller: 2300 – later renamed 2300 AD to avoid confusion with its unrelated predecessor – is a game I strongly associate with the last years of high school and the start of my college education. During those years, I was much devoted to it, in large part because I found its setting so compelling. From its interesting (and unexpected) future history to its plausible future technologies to its truly alien aliens, it had everything that I wanted in a SF RPG at the time. Like many other games on this list, Traveller: 2300 suffered a little because of its clunky rules, but it more than made up for it with its compelling vision of a future three centuries hence. I haven't played in this particular SF sandbox in a long time; perhaps I need to change that in the years to come.

6. Twilight: 2000

At the time it was released, just as I was starting high school, Twilight: 2000 seemed like a fairly plausible take on the End of the World, certainly when compared to more fanciful post-apocalyptic games like Gamma World. Strangely, that was a big part of the game's appeal to me. Later, it was the way the game and its supplements emphasized the importance of rebuilding civilization after the destruction of World War III that held my attention, making it one of the more hopeful post-apocalyptic RPGs. Twilight: 2000 is one of only a few games on this last that I am currently playing and, in its current iteration, is now firmly within the realm of alternate history (I hope). We've been having a lot of fun with it and I intend to talk more about my experiences with it in future posts.

12 comments:

  1. Not familiar with Fading Suns at all. Maybe I should do something about that.

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    1. My review from Pyramid Magazine #23 (1997) is at https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/games_reviews_fading_suns.html, which may help a little.

      Allan.

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    2. Worth noting that Allan's review is for 1st edition. The game is currently on 4th, which is being published under license by Ulisses Spiele and came out relatively recently. The mechanics of the various editions have mutated a fair bit over the years but remained mostly similar (much like, say, White Wolf/Onyx Publishing's World of Darkness games). There were also OGL/d20 and LARP versions of the setting.

      If nothing, the complaint about the original interior artwork (which was actually done by some of the same artists that worked on White Wolf products, and whose style I rather like) no longer applies to the current edition. :)

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  2. I have no issue with any of these, despite only playing a couple

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  3. I have practically identical feelings about (and probably very similar experiences with) Pendragon and 2300 AD.
    I sure agree on the idea that Pendragon is a "perfect" game.

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  4. Pendragon remains one of two games that I'd dearly like to play and learn to play properly. The other one on my list is Bushido, so I'm maybe hoping that that is in your other five.

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  5. James- I am thrilled that you took me up on my suggestion, and I'm especially glad that you received it as intended. I have done some professional writing in my life and I know how difficult it can be to come up with ideas for new content. You are gifted in that regard, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to throw you a bone. Thanks for all of your articles over all of the years. It's an impressive body of work.

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  6. Played all of them, although Gangbusters only had a couple of outings when it was new and I've managed to get enough Pendragon in to really enjoy it, both owing to lack of long-term interest from other players. Actually was mulling over how difficult it would be to mod GB for use in the 1940s and 50s for adventures inspired by the masses of old time radio shows out there.

    T:2300 (which I will always stick the "Traveller" in front of, confusion be damned) is probably the "hardest" scifi TTRPG I've played over the years - although it's still pretty soft by literary standards. The Balkanized setting is a large part of the appeal for me, and reminds me strongly of the loosely-defined default setting of the various Ground Zero Games miniatures games the "Tuffleyverse" as it's known by fans:

    http://www.frits.cistron.nl/tuffleyverse/

    Twilight: 2000 was far too depressing for me when it first came out and never appealed at all. While we've gotten past Y2K at this point I'm not convinced we won't all (well, the survivors, anyway) be LARPing Twilight: 202X whether we like it or not, which makes me even less interested in engaging with the new Twilight:2000 as a TTRPG.

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  7. Gangbusters, funny! there were still people alive in my neighborhood growing up, that had lived as young people during Prohibition. the 42 gang etc.

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  8. No prizes for guessing what will be #1 on this list... :)

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    1. Tomorrow calling. Still feel that way? I would have guessed his #1 and #2 would be inverted. :)

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    2. I really was expecting Traveller as #1, given how often he professes that D&D was his first love but Traveller is his true love.

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