GURPS. It has a little bit of a learning curve and some problems with outdated terminology but it is a great system.
Gurps is hands-down my favorite system, but it’s reputation is so terrible I’ve only once convinced a group of players to play it, and only for one session
Some more freeform systems:
Fate, another great “do all” system with like 2 pages of rules, and mitigation against the dice, you can decide to take a malus now to be able to have a bonus later. Though it’s not combat focused, but that usually means you can develop your encounters more rather than use braindead agressive enemies all the time, and make combat to the death only a last resort.
Hillfolk, more like theater impro framework.
“2 pages of rules” 400-pages FATE rulebook next to me: Am I a joke to you?
Another shoutout for Fate! It’s great
Fate is much more my jam when it comes to “rework for everything” systems. It fits narrative elements with mechanics without being constraining.
Whenever I play PBTA I keep bouncing against the limits of the system because most of them are laser focused on emulating some sort of narrative genre, and often I want more from my characters than to just play out a selected arrangement of tropes. And as a GM I occasionally feature quests that pull from entirely different genres.
I really like Fate and hope to one day find a group that clicks with it. It avoids many of the tropes I’m tired of in D&D.
But in my experience it does need players who are going to do more than phone it in. Passive players can really drag it down. “I dunno I hit him with my sword” kind of works in D&D but not very well in Fate.
Did I miss something or has no one even mentioned any One Roll Engine games?
I mean I love me some Fate, and PbtA is great and all. But where are the Better Angels? The Monsters and Other Childish Things? The Dirty Worlds?
idc what anyone says, Blades in the Dark is not a PbtA game. It has like 2 things in common with PbtA systems
Also PbtA systems are great for a story focused games, but they’re not exactly tactical and characters tend to be a little static. They focus on story pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. If you want story though go for it, they’re great. I prefer more of a balance personally.
Worlds Without Number focuses on sandbox play and strikes a nice balance with story and combat. Stars Without Number is basically the Sci-fi version. Both are free with premium versions that have a bit of nice optional content, like more powerful options for heroic characters and Star Wars style space magic
Except BitD is an Apocalypse World hack, albeit a more thorough one. John Harper even calls it a PbtA game. I hate to link to stupid bird site, but he says it himself.
And personally, I can see how BitD contains a huge amout of PbtA DNA.
But I dunno, I guess you said you don’t care what anyone says…
I hate to be pedantic (this is a lie), but I’m pretty sure Worlds Without Number is actually the fantasy version of Stars Without Number, since Stars came out first. This doesn’t change your point (also I agree with you) and I’m really not sure that this information is helpful in any way, but here we are.
