My own, tbh.

Way back in the day, I played with some guys. D&d, call of Cthulu, and a modified GURPS system the primary DM had cooked up that allowed for a kind of cross system compatibility.

When I partially fell out with the group, I still thought a system that could easily incorporate characters from most systems was a brilliant idea. So I cooked up my own.

Took some ideas from everything I had played up to that point, made some up, and then figured out a conversion/compatibility method. You could, in theory, bring a d&d character, a Marvel heroes ttrpg character, a Cthulu character and a GURPS character all into the same party and play them in a given setting with only minor extra math.

After a few play sessions with friends, I had to rework some things, changed up how you rolled a character, built a single set of trait scaling tables and threw out classes entirely. By the end of about a year of play, I had modified the original concept into something that worked okay as a cross-compatible thing, but worked very well on its own, and the setting became the focus.

It ended up being really flexible for character concepts because without classes, you’re free to follow any number of paths all at once, or separately. As the setting developed, I cooked up various “races” that were available to play that are either unique entirely, or (like with vampires or werewolves) exist as their own iteration of something generic. My best friend designed a couple of specialized magic systems that are kinda classes just because of the degree of prerequisites it requires to start as one, but the overall play style remains really character driven rather than class driven

Thing is, as time passed, the viability of moving characters from other systems into it fizzled because the upper end of power thresholds gets way beyond what even super high level d&d characters can pull off. So you could bring your level 20 mage in and play it, but they might get roflstomped by a kid from Chicago with the right powers and abilities that’s level 1. Including things that allow players to run what amounts to a superhero kinda makes even a level 20 d&d fighter a joke, at least at first.

But it’s the setting that really makes the system work. It’s near-future, based in the milky way galaxy in a universe that is high magic and high tech. Sci-fi and fantasy merged with superheroes and gods.

Thing is, I still love d&d, and my setting for that is tied to my “core reality” by a shared world building concept. The d&d setting is all on the surface of my version of the goddess Tiamat (who is not the d&d dragon goddess). Each continent is a scale on the solar system sized snake that is one aspect of the goddess.

Anyway, that’s my favorite system. But I have only ever played in it once, when my best friend ran a campaign using the system in his own setting. It was awesome, but he’s really the only other person that’s wanted to run a game in it.

As a player, I guess d&d is what I’ve played most, and I really love the game, no matter what setting it’s in. I prefer 3.x edition over the other options, but enjoy every other edition except 4e.

Since I was mostly the forever DM, I tend to like playing really simple characters. The sort that don’t take a lot of character sheet fiddling to play, so I can role play as my primary source of fun. So I usually end up playing fighters of some variety. Maybe a paladin or rogue rather than barbarian or fighter, but something melee based almost always.

I’m currently playing for the first time in ages, but it’s an online vampire the masquerade game. The white wolf stuff isn’t my favorite system since the clan thing is kinda boring to me. IDGAF about the millennia of drama if I can’t actually play a character that’s old enough to have been there for it, and nobody ever runs those games that I’m able to play in. But I don’t mind playing the regular kind of game since it’s going to be a chance to fuck around as someone else.

Don’t wanna give much in the way of detail on the off chance someone in the game uses lemmy, but my character is a hecata that used to be a doctor, and now raises zombies for fun and profit.

I play PF2e primarily, though I’m not quite satisfied with it. I want more fantasy sandbox rather than fantasy combat sim, so it doesn’t quite satisfy what I want on a purely mechanical level. But I do love my heavily armored magicians… shame what happened to the battle oracle in the remaster.

Right now I’m playing an imperial sorcerer with the Wood Kineticist archetype, and I just hit level 4 where I ascend to “Ikeamancer,” summoning trees and woodshaping them into cheap edifices and furniture. In two more levels, I’ll get the ability to make wood armor to wear that is usable without proficiency, and a regenerating shield. And one more level after that, I’ll have a funky little flying platform to rain spells down from above from. Good fun.

As for the character himself, he’s a total bastard (in both senses of the word) who has defected to another country and just absolutely cannot get over how people are being nice to him for some reason. He now feels bad about his family’s harm inflicted on these same people, and the prejudice he displayed during his meeting with them.

I run one-shot games at conventions, mostly FATE and Dread. At the conventions I tend to join a lot of Mork Bork and Numenera games, although I’ve never GM’d them.

I also play in longer D&D campaigns with friends, but we’ve played other campaigns in Firefly (Cortex) and Star Trek Adventures.

FATE is my favorite for the flexibility. People tend to focus on making the story good as opposed to trying to work against the restraints of their character. Unfortunately most people in my friend group are Pathfinder/D&D focused, so we tend to go that direction.

Meanwhile I probably run No Thank You, Evil! the most lately, just because my household has become overrun with kids.

I recently received Triangle Agency, so I’m excited to try that.

Played D&D 5e for years, dabbled in PF 2e, but GURPS is my home now. In the same way Pathfinder increases the richness of mechanics over D&D, GURPS goes even further.

I like playing characters that can solve problems in creative ways. My last two D&D characters were an Artificer and an Order of Scribes Wizard. D&D is pretty frustrating for this though, which is part of what pushed me to a system with more customization.

My current character is Umak Tchuali, a wizard specialized in meta-magic. He can block spells, deflect them, reflect them, change how they work, etc. Kinda like a D&D Order of Scribes wizard mixed with a sorcerer .

I’m not a perpetual DM but I’m the default among my friends. I’ve played D&D editions since 2e in school, up to 5e. I’ve also played some PF, WoD (mage and an ill-fated werewolf campaign) Fate, Gurps, Paranoia and a few others I’ll trim from this list for brevity.

I got fed up with D&D over decades failng to make martial characters feel impactful and interesting, magic characters having overly broad ranges of abilities that obviate martial characters, and with how long it takes for character ability to overpower randomness in the d20 system in general. I ended up writing a far future science fantasy setting and associated fate-like ruleset that I’m running now in a playtest to moderate success. I wrote out a custom VTT character sheet with automated dice rolls and math to ease my players into things, and I got a lot of engagement from them that’s helping me polish.

I’ve always preferred homebrewing for the surprise it brings but I bit off… a lot with this approach. Chewing it is proving difficult. Being able to say yes to my players ideas more often and fleshing out noncombat play more feels worth it though and I’m having a lot of fun.

I still swear by Pathfinder 1e, I just recently finished GMing a campaign that ran for over 10 years. I haven’t found another system that offers the sheer amount of options to play exactly the character you want that pathfinder does.

Perpetual GM here. I love PF, both 1e and 2e. Mostly playing the latter these days as it’s way simpler for new players. But my absolute love is Blades in the Dark. I run a game of that too and it’s just the absolute best.

Since I never get to play: I have a literally boundless library of characters in my head if any of my players ever express even an inkling of wanting to take the GM seat.

I tried playing a warlock and it ended up that he was way more into the patronage thing than the patron was. He made a big Fullmetal Alchemist style summoning gesture to hand the MacGuffin over to the patron, only to ne told “dial it back” by Lord Azazel.

I’ve only really ever played Pathfinder (I forget the version we played), and DnD 5e. The types of campaigns I like to be part of are really fast-and-loose numbers-are-a-suggestion type heavy on the storytelling and roleplay. I’ve played some amazing campaigns, and I love sharing all the crazy stories.

One fun one that comes to mind is a 5e campaign which was anime mech fighting high-school themed… I played a “warlock” character who was a deadbeat street thug who schmoozed and lied his way into the academy to try and move up in the world even though he had no mech fighting or other relevant experience, and my patron was a significantly older otaku who would channel their years of expertise through me via sat phone/an earpiece to pilot the robot. Out of everyone in the campaign, I had the smallest, weakest weapon, a simple dagger, but I was able to manipulate the images reflected off the dagger’s blade and did most of my damage and combat via psychological warfare and manipulation (which were canonically things that I had tons of experience with from my time on the streets). I ended up getting like full-mech active camo as a logical extension of the blade-reflection-manipulation and went towards a stealth build which was fun.

After all the people I played with all moved away and we stopped playing, I tried to go to a game store and find a campaign. I found some people who were looking to start something, and I built a Kenku alchemist/rogue with a whole tragic backstory with a bunch of various villains I gave to the DM if they needed anything to tie in. I 3D printed a bunch of little percussion instruments, made a custom not-obnoxious utility sound-board on my phone, and even made a custom Guiro with differently-spaced ridges that the sound of was supposed to be my “real kenku name”… Nobody cared, everyone was annoyed at my insistence to be thorough in roleplaying, the wizard was a min-maxing Timmy rules lawyer who’s only character trait was “Hat that slowly gets bigger without you noticing until it’s a really fucking big hat”, and needless to say I only played like 2 sessions lol

Call of Cthulhu has the best general system which is the most intuitive and easy to run that I have tried. All your skills are percentages so it takes people no time at all to learn the basics and rolls are fast. So the rules get out of the way of the story.

Delta Green is an extension of this and one of my favourites to run. The main rules change is that when your character suffers stress, you can choose to defer the points hit to your characters friends and family (Bonds, in game parlance). These degrading relationships can then play out as roleplay later as your character begins to lose their grip.

Out of the systems I’ve actually played, I’ll always love Lancer. I usually play young characters inspired by whatever I’m really into at the moment (for example, my latest Lancer is somewhat of an expy of Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion).

Also a big fan of Pathfinder! I tend to like systems with some crunch, but not enough that it bogs down the narrative.

I’m currently playing Hunter: The Reckoning with some friends over zoom and loving it! We’ve played a few World of Darkness games together, so it’s an interesting change playing an all-too-human hunter instead of one of the creatures I’m now hunting.

If you’re into TTRPGs, try posting to !rpg@ttrpg.network occasionally… that community could use some love.

I don’t feel like it was that long ago, but I guess it was.

I started on 3.5/PF1 and played a loose few games on those. Once 5e came out, we switched over and had a ton of fun with it.

Inevitably I started DMing for 5e. I just… I’m not gifted in the least with Game Design, so I struggled really hard once my players hit 8th level. I couldn’t build a strong enough encounter to challenge them without having to flub so much on my end. It became a source of frustration and I was often harried. Unfortunately big life events ended that campaign. I’ve tried to start up a few more as a DM, but I feel like I’ve lost that little je ne sais quoi that made me a good DM.

After my third DnD campaign crashed and burned, I started looking into PF2e, joined a game, and then another, and another and another. Lol.

Right now we’re going through Fists of the Ruby Phoenix and having so so much fun.

I absolutely adore a lot of what 2e is about, but I do have some things I’m starting to notice grate at me after having been starry eyed for a few years, now. Still, it’s incredibly fun.

I’ve played, in 2e,

• a Champion (before the remaster, and I really wasn’t a fan. I think it’s better now),
• a pirate Drunken Monk (so much fun),
• a ruffian rogue (unfortunately the campaign just wasn’t our favorite, but I was starting to make that build an absolute monster)
• a witch (I had never played a caster prior to this)
• an earth+water Kineticist (so. Much. Fun.)

Monks are my favorite class and have been forever, but the kineticist is making leaps and bounds to be my #2. It might also bee that we’re level 13, so she can do a lot, but still. Fun fun fun.

The kineticist herself is an oread (earth genasi, basically), who was born in a village that was blessed with earth magic, but cursed at the same time by a wicked Dao. Her and her people have little spots of their skin that turns to stone, but it grows and grows and grows to eventually immobilize and kill them. She, herself, has a fair few patches that she’s hiding from the party because she’s a fucking idiot (lovingly). But yeah! She’s very stoic and this is very out of my usual play zone, I typically make jokesters or shit-stirrers with loud attitudes. But being stoic and calm and just ready to silently sacrifice herself for her team is difficult - though a lot of fun.

… Sorry for the rant. I love talking about these things ahaha

Toss up between Warhammer Fantasy RP and Pendragon. WFRP has a reputation for grimdarkness and brutality (fair). Pendragon has a lovely system that plays fast and really encourages actual roleplaying in Arthurian Britain.

And the most brutal thing I’ve ever seen happen in a RPG was in Pendragon. The standard start includes some training exercises with your squire characters, including a joust with practice lances (break easily, no points or metal heads). You get to this within 10 minutes of starting, after 30-60 minutes of character creation.

One of the players suffered a critical hit to the face with a “safety lance” and was killed instantly. Had to roll up a new character, but was laughing the entire time.