This one's pretty much what it says on the tin-- for those of you that play rpgs in some form already, what do you play and enjoy? As I've mentioned before, I wrote my own system--Cold Steel Wardens-- and am working on a second game, focusing on occult horror during the early Crusades. I cut my teeth on 2e and 3e D&D through middle and high school, but grew frustrated with the system during the 5e playtests and gave it up entirely. These days, if I want to play a fantasy game, I'll play Dragon Age from Green Ronin or Shadows of the Demon Lord from Robert Schwalb. I do find that I like a good dose of horror in my tabletop games. Call of Cthulhu is a classic, and I worked on the cubicle 7 offshoot, The Laundry. I really enjoy Delta Green, and some of my favorite early games in high school were Vampire: the Masquerade. Strangely, I might end up running that one sooner than later. I actually starting gaming with Heroes Unlimited from Palladium, so superhero rpgs are near and dear to me. Aside from CSW, other favorites include Icons and Marvel Heroic. I'm also fairly deep into Savage Worlds, particularly their Deadlands games. Two of the longest running campaigns I ran were of Deadlands and its sequel, Hell on Earth.
This is going to date me but I'm a massive White Wolf fan. I got into them ~ 2000 with Vampire and Werewolf. Any spare money I had I spent on books they made. Even books I knew I would never get a group to play like the wealth bok set in WE2. When the world was rebooted I bought their games again and have backed the stuff Onyx Path have kickstarted.
I also like collecting bad rpgs , I have a copy of Wreathu that I will someday convince people to play.
Now though I mainly play in a system/setting that a friend of mine developed.
I pretty much only got to play 3.5D&D, d20 Modern, and one of our players' heavily-altered version of what I think was the Star Wars d6 system (altered to better fit the Space Quest universe).
We never used the canon settings straight-up, though, versus mostly playing in a very weird homebrew fantasy-ish setting with occasional forays into the above Space Quest-themed world or some one-off other homebrew fantasy settings.
I always wanted to play something better suited to the skill and roleplay-heavy and combat-light games we always ended up playing, but never got around to trying other systems with them.
My first tabletop experience was in college with a crazy GM who introduced me to Unisystem. It's a pretty good GURPS clone, where it's meant to be light mechanically and easy to port genres in with little effort.
Also playtested an early build of Valor: The Heroic Anime RP. I can't say I really recommend it, though-- even with where it ended up.
Still dipping my feet into D&D/Pathfinder, but usually I'm more for modern settings or low-fantasy than the swords and sorcery offerings.
Classic or Cinematic?
And I'll admit that I disagree about it being a GURPS clone, although I can see them scratching similar itches. In particular, GURPS doesn't (as far as I remember) have the exploding successes/failures that Unisystem does.
The major one I play is Anima Beyond Fantasy.
We occasionally break out DnD 4th.
I started out LARPing White Wolf, along with a homebrew system cooked up by one of my friends. In college, I had my first experience with D&D -- 2nd ed., so I was really glad when 3rd ed. came out shortly thereafter.
I then tried so many systems, I can't remember them all. D: Deadlands, Big Eyes Small Mouth, Champions, Mutants and Maserminds, Aberrant (I may never have actually played this, but I know I made a character once), GURPS I'm pretty sure... Plus tons of homebrew systems. I surrounded myself with gamers for many, many years. And the only one I didn't like was L5R; I can't get into the stringent social roles.
Then I took a break for like ten years. The latest systems I've played are something called... uh, like Last Stand or something? You wear powered armor and fight alien insects. <.< And I ran through a free-standing scenario my friend like adapting for Whitewolf, for like the third time, not that long ago.
RPG’s are normally something I have zero interest in, but if the theme is right, I’ll happily play. Other than the Sentinels RPG (which cannot arrive fast enough) I’ve only ever played one RPG: Stargate.
It’s set in the Stargate universe which I absolutely love. It’s a D20 system with it’s own races and classes and uses PHB 3.5 as support. It also helps that we have a good GM, though we do try our best to surprise her whenever we get the chance.
I got my first introduction to RPGs with GURPS, and for years it was either that or DnD 4e - had a pretty good campaign of the latter for a couple of years there. Then I ran a few games of Apocalypse World, and most recently I've been running Pokémon Pen and Paper, which I'm finding really easy to run (although finding the time around work + uni is...challenging). I really like AW, and I think a lot of the advice it gives to GMs is invaluable no matter what you play, so I've tried to use that in my later games, and I think it's worked pretty well!
I've often looked at a lot of white wolf stuff and been interested in the fluff, but I've never played any of it (unless running Burn Legend counts) because it all seems very...I don't know, clunky. It probably makes more sense when you're playing it, I'm sure.
In terms of tabletop RPGs, DnD Fourth Edition is the main one I know - I've played a bunch of games of it, both at tabletop and forum-based (over on RPOL). I have played a bunch of other tabletop RPGs but mainly only a session or two (if that :P) before they fizzled out and died, back at the gaming club I used to go to before I got bored since all the games we stared tended to very quickly fizzle out and die :P. Oh, I also ran a Hollow Earth Expedition game for a little while over on RPOL and have played that a bit at tabletop as well. Other systems I have played in at tabletop in the aforementioned short-lived games include World of Darkness (Werewolf, think it was New-WoD rather than Old-WoD), Nobilis, ADnD 2nd, Scion (this one never got past char gen), Dark Heresy (actually the longest-lived game, lasted 11 months before having an actual ending...which was some kind of cinematic TPK-type-thing which I found really unsatisfying), Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, WFRP, Savage Worlds (Deadlands), umm...and probably bunch of others I've forgotten right now. Oh yeah, Farscape, Doctor Who...and I own the book for the Red Dwarf RPG but haven't had a chance to play it yet :(.
That's tabletop. As for computer-based RPGs I have played many, going back as far as the late '80s with games like Dungeon Master (no relation to DnD) and Chaos Strikes Back. Also stuff like the Elder Scrolls series (Morrowind being my favourite), Might and Magic VI-VIII, Dragon Age Origins, Divinity II, Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma (which I'm currently playing), the Ishar trilogy (though I don't think I ever got very far), a bunch of other stuff...oh, and a load of ARPGs too, such as the Torchlight games, Diablo series (well, I haven't played the first one), Titan Quest (possibly my favourite ARPG), Grim Dawn, umm, and again, some other games I've probably forgotten for the moment.
Many games! :D
I wont say it would be easier to list the RPGs I haven't played in because that would be a lie, (there are more systems than you've had hot dinners. Yes, even you.) but I have played a lot.
Let's have a list and then I'll come back and edit some thoughts in tomorrow.
Advanced Fighting Fantasy (I think this was my first but that memory is actually lost to the mists of time), Call of Cthulhu (various editions), a few homebrews systems (notably Heroic Cthulhu), Savage Worlds (Deadlands, Superheroes, 50 Fathoms, generic fantasy, Noir), Deadlands (the original system), Marvel Superheroes/Cortex, Fate (various editions), FAE, The Serenity RPG, various Apocalpyse World systems (including Apocalpyse World itself!), Feng Shui (1st and 2nd Ed), Scavengers, Too many playtested systems to even begin to count- some which never saw the light of day, Red Markets, D&D (2, 3, 3.5), Pathfinder, One Roll Engine, Warhammer Fantasy Role Play (2nd and 3rd), Shadowrun (... I have no idea what editions anymore, but I did try the latest quick play variant... anarchy?), Cosmic Patrol... and other systems where I have played a single game in them and promptly forgotten.
And of course, Cold Steel Wardens!
That's a pretty fair assessment of Unisystem, yeah.
Also, mostly play Cinematic. Although I've been craving trying the dream world stuff out of WitchCraft and/or doing a low-power game in Conspiracy X
DnD Fifth edition is the big one for me, I've run it pretty consistently since it has come out. Played 4e and I have to say I prefer the looser style of Fifth, especially as a DM.
Savage worlds (Deadlands, Supers, Sci-Fi, or just the base game) falls in a close second, Cold Steel Wardens is on the list, I ran a really successful game of Dread a few weeks ago, but that was the only time I've gotten to try that so I don't think it counts.
There's quite a few systems I've played once or twice, just getting my feet wet so to speak, but those hit the major points
I originally learned D&D 3, before moving to 3.5. Now I like Pathfinder, and am going to start a Starfinder game sometime soon. I also really like Trail of Cthulhu, which is GUMSHOE system, and Fantasy Flight's Star Wars
Oh, I can't believe I forgot to mention one of my favourites: Don't Rest Your Head!
I found this thanks to...tvtropes, I think, grabbed the sourcebook and persuaded people to play a game. Because of the way character creation is done, I didn't really have any chance to prepare much before the first session, so that was just five hours of me improvising like crazy.
It was amazing, and I managed to scare my players and make them laugh, sometimes both at once. Takes a lot of dice, though.
Great story, which I won't do justice:
Evil Hat Productions got the license to the Dresden Files RPG because Fred Hicks and Jim Butcher are really old gaming buddies, and knew each other via AmberMUSH. Fred & Rob knew they wanted to do Dresden justice, so they tried to design a game to make sure they had a potential screw-up out of the way. That game because Spirit of the Century. But in doing that, they realized they needed to design another game in order to figure out the ins and outs of this publishing game. That game became Don't Rest Your Head.
That is a great story. Wow.
I'm currently playing in an Ashen Stars campaign (Sort of a DS9/Firefly-ish game with PCs playing freelance troubleshooters in the outskirts of space after the "federation" has collapsed) and a D&D 5e cross-generational campaign (that is, I'm playing with my 13yo daughter and one of her friends to help introduce them to the game).
In Ashen Stars, I'm the cyborg pilot of the Jackalope (grew up on an asteroid mining colony, then flew EMS ships during the war). In D&D, I'm a Human sailor who became a Tempest Cleric (*cough* Priest of the Drowned God).
In the past, I've played lots of GURPS and an extended Deadlands campaign.
I will play anything, although a lot of games I end up skinning onto the EABA system (v2 is incredibly well done and criminally unknown).
I occasionally get a short run of my own game world going, but sadly I don't have a regular group right now.
The most recent longer game I ran was an EABA rebuild of the terrible mess that is the Battletech role-playing game for some friends that wanted to break out Battletech but have a better story.
HuH.... Do... do you want the whole list or just the ones i'm actually physically playing now?
Well. At the moment I play FFS Edge of the Empire. I also play Pathfinder or Starfinder depending on the week, and we're getting ready to restart Legend of the Five rings with the new FFS Beta material.
at various different times i've run Scion, Various other White Wolf titles (Vampire classic, & a mixed title campaign.) I've also run Star Wars D20, Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, Legend of the Five RIngs 4E, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, Pathfinder(that one shows up alot), Rogue Trader, and Death Watch. There's probably others i'm forgetting but if i forgot the campaigns they probably weren't that good.