Great Big Gaming Preferences Post
So Shamus Young has asked his readers which gaming systems they like to use. I can't sign in to his site at work (for some reason), so I'm answering here.
What gaming system did you start with when you were learning the game?
My gaming career kicked off with the D&D Red Box, but I was never really satisfied with it. I'd seen one of the Gold Box computer games (Curse of the Azure Bonds, if you're interested) in action at a friend's place, and knew that the rules I had weren't the complete ones. I had a scaled-back, and therefore suboptimal, set of rules, and this could not be tolerated. I moved on to 2nd edition AD&D thanks to generous financial support from Mum and Dad, and fetched up on its complex reef of divergent rules and crusted-on subsystems for several years. Honestly, for ages I assumed that AD&D was it.
It wasn't until years later, after completely failing to run a horror-themed adventure, that I decided I wanted to tell different kinds of stories, and needed different tools to do so. I picked up Call of Cthulhu in 1993 and, wonder of wonders, saw that it did completely different things well. This was kind of a watershed moment for me, and it's led more or less directly to the current proliferation of games on my shelves1.
What's your preferred gaming system when you're running a game?
It depends on what sort of game I'm trying to run. Obviously I'm more fond of some than others, but generally there'll be a system that feels like the right one for the job.
From my standpoint as a GM with a limited amount of time on his hands, though, Unknown Armies and REIGN (with its ability to generate characters, organisations, cities etc. with one roll) are things of beauty.
What system to you prefer as a player?
I'll level with you - I can count on one hand the number of times I've sat down to a gaming table as a player. I'm trying to get my current Ars Magica group to embrace the troupe play concept that the game has been espousing for yonks, but with little success so far. ArM is a fun system for players (I think) because it's got a lot of fiddly bits to play around with, all of which work well together. On the other hand, UA and REIGN would be favourites too, because they're simple, adapable and put the emphasis on character, rather than statistics.
And because we live in an imperfect world: What system do you actually end up using?
Ah, now - one of the joys of being a GM with a group that's been stable over several years is that I can whinge and cajole them into playing just about anything I like. Over the last four years or so, we've played a Cthulhu campaign, Unknown Armies, a short bout of (original) Deadlands, Unknown Armies again, some Savage Worlds and currently Ars Magica, fifth edition.
I'm not sure what'll be next. I suspect it'll be whatever I'm geeking out over when this campaign comes to an end.
1Twenty, at last count, plus four that I've decided I didn't like and sold on, plus a handful of others that I'm not counting because they've only been released as free downloads (StarORE, In Spaaaaaace! etc.)