#RPGaDay - Day 18
Day 18: Favorite Game System
This is tough, since there are a lot of great systems out there that help you to play a lot of different kinds of games. The best systems, in my opinion, are designed so that the mechanics actually guide you toward the kind of stories that fit the theme of the game. A great example of this is Fiasco - the theme of the game is that you're playing heist stories that are just about to go off the rails. The playbooks really push you in that direction by helping you set up a scenario where everything can fall apart at a moment's notice. It's a seemingly really simple design, but it's extremely effective at helping you play the game. It's also a ton of fun to play.
However, it's not quite my favorite game system. That honor would have to go to Fate Core. Fate Core is a game designed to help you tell cinematic stories with big action and emotional payoffs, and the game pulls everything together brilliantly. The combat system is fluid and quite cinematic - in order to get big hits on your opponents, you're encouraged to use the battlefield creatively or do special maneuvers to get an advantage, which lends itself to more than just swinging your sword over and over. The rules for combat cover both physical and mental conflicts, so you can have a philosophical argument that's just as tense as a gunfight. The Aspect system encourages the GM to bring the characters' most personal issues into the game on a regular basis, which is exactly the kind of thing that happens in an exciting book or movie. The game is also really, really easy to run, very easy to modify or play around with on the fly. It's also generic enough that it can take lots of different genres - I ran a Star Trek: The Original Series campaign using it, and I'm currently running a campaign about supervillains using much the same rules.
This is tough, since there are a lot of great systems out there that help you to play a lot of different kinds of games. The best systems, in my opinion, are designed so that the mechanics actually guide you toward the kind of stories that fit the theme of the game. A great example of this is Fiasco - the theme of the game is that you're playing heist stories that are just about to go off the rails. The playbooks really push you in that direction by helping you set up a scenario where everything can fall apart at a moment's notice. It's a seemingly really simple design, but it's extremely effective at helping you play the game. It's also a ton of fun to play.
However, it's not quite my favorite game system. That honor would have to go to Fate Core. Fate Core is a game designed to help you tell cinematic stories with big action and emotional payoffs, and the game pulls everything together brilliantly. The combat system is fluid and quite cinematic - in order to get big hits on your opponents, you're encouraged to use the battlefield creatively or do special maneuvers to get an advantage, which lends itself to more than just swinging your sword over and over. The rules for combat cover both physical and mental conflicts, so you can have a philosophical argument that's just as tense as a gunfight. The Aspect system encourages the GM to bring the characters' most personal issues into the game on a regular basis, which is exactly the kind of thing that happens in an exciting book or movie. The game is also really, really easy to run, very easy to modify or play around with on the fly. It's also generic enough that it can take lots of different genres - I ran a Star Trek: The Original Series campaign using it, and I'm currently running a campaign about supervillains using much the same rules.