The Major Spoilers podcast, Critical Hit, has been going strong since 2009 – that’s eight years! During that time, we’ve tried a number of systems, and we look forward to trying more. The world of RPG is wide and deep, with many systems filling your shelves and vying for space during your game night.
Which brings us to the all important question for this week!
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At the end of the day, while those I’ve played of these systems have all been enjoyable, D&D always remains my favorite through about every edition. However, I will admit that a large part of this is just the sheer amount of extra material available, both licensed handbooks and third party add-ons alike (and that doesn’t even count the player created stuff available online these days). I will also admit that it is one I’ve played for a good chunk of my life, so there may be a little nostalgia and familiarity influencing this choice as well.
I have not played all of these systems so I cannot speak to which one is the best. Thankfully though, that is not what the question is asking. It is asking which system I like the most. While I once played a fantastic game of Shadowrun at my first ever gaming convention back in ’95, I never returned to the system because it wasn’t my preferred ‘feel’. I am playing in a monthly Pathfinder Society game right now with my daughter. The game master is great, and I love the bonding time with the kid, but Pathfinder just has too many mechanical options that get in the way of a true role playing experience for my taste. Fate is a really fun, infinitely adaptable system. I have had a couple of really great sessions around a table with these rules, but where Pathfinder is heavy on mechanics, Fate is very light, which means you have to have just the right group of players to have a good time. Even though I know it will be the winner in a landslide (and it galls me to no end to pick the favorite in any race) I have to go with D&D. It was my first love. I discovered the game when I was about ten years old visiting my cousins. I actually got to play a couple years later when I bought the “Black Box” basic D&D set at my local B. Daltons. My parents had just split up, so the time I was able to spend in those books and modules, as well as behind the DM screen, helped me through my troubled teenage years. D&D is my go-to system, and I have not missed a single edition. I don’t have any local players right now, but I love ducking back behind a digital DM screen every couple of weeks to run a game on roll20.net. D&D will always be #1 in my heart.
I tend to prefer rules light and versatile systems nowadays, so, Fate.
Dungeons and Dragons will always hold the spot as top for me, as it’s what I learned first and what I continue to play the most.
You don’t have my choice. I vote 13th Age because it has some of the elements of D&D with a lot of the unnecessary mechanics stripped out and new story elements thrown in.
Without that choice I chose FATE
I grew up with D&D, Critical Hit got me back into it with 4e, but 5e is now my edition. I’m loving the way D&D works this way to the point that I spend the majority of my leisure time creating characters and adventure arcs I clearly don’t have time to play.
The Critical Hit/Major Spoilers crew has made a great case for Fate. I too, from listening to the podcast and perusing the PDF online find the collaborative effort and simpler rules very intriguing.
Great poll! Great podcast!
Oooh, this is an interesting question!
I love Fate for the reasons Matthew, Steven and Rodrigo brought up in this week’s podcast. The collaborative worldbuilding and storytelling is wonderful. Based on the mechanics alone, I had to vote for Fate.
That said, my favourite roleplaying *experience* is still the campaign of Geist: The Sin Eaters (part of the New World of Darkness) that I played with three friends in 2012, so I have a love for that system that’s probably disproportionate to its actual quality. Our GM did a great job, particularly with the group of five antagonists with very distinct and believable motivations – they really felt like a group of disparate individuals who’d fallen in together due to a common goal, much like ourselves.
It was also an fascinating challenge to play a character who wanted to do the right thing when my team-mates tended towards a considerably more wacky and amoral playstyle.* In the end my character had to compromise his moral stance as events unfolded around him, leading to a lot of pent-up anger. It was a window into a personality type that both is and isn’t similar to my own, and one that I’ll never forget – I still regularly get back into that character’s mindset and think about what would have changed in his life in the few years since our last game.
I believe at some point this post was supposed to be about systems, so I’ll bring this tangent to an end before I get any more misty-eyed. Fun times.
* How wacky and amoral? John Goodman was a corrupt lawyer who conned a cult into believing he was the Second Coming of Christ. I forget what Clint Eastwood’s job was, but he wore a duck on his hat and erected a giant sign saying “F*** off” in the middle of a cemetery. Like I said, a challenge…
I’m mostly a fan of D&D 4e, though there are aspects of 5e I enjoy too. If they created an edition with the gameplay of 4e, but the lower stats philosophy that 5e employs, I’d be ecstatic. Really disappointed that 5e went back to the boring “I hit dude with sharp stick” combat of 3 and below, makes playing martial characters boring.
All combat , magic included, has been reduced down. I think there are plenty of options left in 5e to get through the much shorter rounds. A battlemaster fighter has many options in combat. A rogue may not seem like they have options but they don’t have to search through their powers to figure a way to sneak up on a foe and do things like trip a foe or steal something. I find 4e to change into a completely different game when initiative is rolled and it makes it extremely hard to look away from that character sheet and come up with interesting ideas to improve on narrative.