Monday, December 23, 2019

5 Best RPGs of the Decade



It's hard to believe that 2020 is right around the corner. In a lot of ways the world is both better and worse off than Mike Pondsmith wrote about in R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.

I'm sending this decade off with my five favorite Role Playing Games.

Shadow of the Demon Lord is, probably, my favorite RPG of all time. I like how it takes elements of both Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy Role Play and runs with them. I like that it has a ton of supplements, sometimes with a weekly release, and I love that it's adventures are, generally, less than five pages. I cannot recommend this game enough.

Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition is pretty darn close to how I would have designed the World's First Role Playing Game. I like that the bonus equality has been fixed and think bounded accuracy is a welcome change of pace. I also like that they aren't killing us with splatbooks.

The Hero's Journey Fantasy Role Playing game by James M. Spahn is a derivation of Swords and Wizardry and a continuation of Swords and Wizardry White Box. I think it's a great game for new, veteran, and returning players and is inspired by Professor Tolkien, himself.  Honorable mention goes to White Star, also by Spahn.

13th Age by the legendary Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo takes Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition and removes the requirement of miniatures and adds in some elements of "story games". This would probably been my number two game if Wizards hadn't nailed DnD 5E.

This was a tough one, but I'm going with Numenera by Monte Cook. The setting and set-up of Eath a billion years in the future and the system has some charm to it, but there are some strange bells and whistles and I'm kind of soured on Monte Cook Games. But when I loved this game I loved it a lot. Honorable mention goes to Savage World Explorer's Edition and TinyD6 (which, IMO, is what I always wanted Savage Worlds to be).

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