This is not for CRPG's (that gets done to death and funny on these forums a TES game comes out on top)

This is for nominating the greatest PnP RPG ever written. Give a your reasons why your preferred PnP RPG is the best game ever devised. Any genre, any system. In the case of multiple editions state which edition your nominating. This thread will remain open for a week, after which will take the top 5 games with the most votes for a poll.

One game per poster please. And please nominate an RPG not a Board game, CCG, CRPGS or any other spinoffs, this is for the best Pen and Paper RPG

Nominations so far
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying - 1
Shadow Run - 2
Battletech RPG - 1
Mutant - 1
Ars Magica - 1
Midgard - 1
G.U.R.P.S. - 1
Rifts - 1
Mongoose's Runequest II -1
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd ed - 2
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st ed -1
Mage: The Ascension - 1
Dungeons & Dragons v. 3.5 - 1
Pendragon - 1
Star Wars Saga Edition - 2
HERO - 2
Amber -1
Dark Conspiracy -1
Vampire The Masquerade - 2

My nomination is for Warhammer fantasy role playing 1st edition

The system - This is the anti munchkin game, there are not tons of weapon stats and the emphasis is heavily on RPing. You can play anything from a lowly rat catcher to a city guard, bounty hunter to more heroic classes. Combat is deadly one or two hits can kill anyone, your PC's really have to think before attacking that band goblins as one lucky hit and they will go down. The system is designed that the players can try anything with skills adding a bonus. The system is about good narrative and not number crunching.

First edition is pretty much a complete game in one book, the bestiary is complete and allows the GM to modify each entries stats, and add skills (the entries are not designed to only be used as is)

The background - This is the Warhammer world from the late 80's, before a lot of silliness crept in. The theme is very much that man will sow the seeds for his own destruction, Orcs are not mushrooms, Bretonnia is more pre-revolutionary France, rather than a poor Arthurian rip off. The plots are more investigative in nature and about uncovering conspiracies rather than straight good vs evil. There is enough background to start off with and plenty of blank areas, to develop.

Published books - No mention of 1st edition is complete without including the enemy within campaign. This is one of the best pre published campaigns. Like a lot of pre published campaigns it needs tweaking to suit the players style, and I change a few elements of encounters and develop plot lines myself but there are real gems here. Shadows over Bogenhaffen is the best scenario for new players ever written IMO. Death on the Reich gives the PCs a huge amount of freedom to explore. Power behind the throne is just awesome, its a lot of work to GM but hugely rewarding. It does fall down a bit with Something rotten in Kislev (written by the way by Ken Rolston), its not all bad but some feel it doesn't fit in and is best used outside of the enemy within, and some see Empire in Flames as a bit anti climatic but I found that it works well with some tweaking. The hogshead books are mostly collections of reprints but their source book Marineburg-sold down the river is considered the best city source book there is and I agree, this and the main rulebook will keep your group busy (in fact some when running the enemy within send the PCs here instead of Kislev).

Everything I need out of a fantasy RPG WFRPv1 delvers I don't need any other system for fantasy, the system is elegant and allows the GM room to maneuver, the background is excellent and the pre published campaigns and adventures are better then most offers from other games.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Classic_BattleTech_RPG - Just because Battletech has such rich and interesting lore and story behind it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_2000 - Post-Apocalyptic RPG

Both great games but only one game nomination per poster will edit the original post

Hero Quest loosely based off of the Warhammer game only its a board game.

Star Wars RPG. Its Star Wars...'nuff said.

For the purpose of this thread we'll count the RPG

Do you mean the West end games D6 Star wars, or the later D20 (Which was used in KotOR)

Shadowrun.

Magic + machines + Megacorps... Oh My!

Then I must chose the Battletech RPG. There is never enough sci-fi games out there.

My favorite is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_(role-playing_game)#Mutant from 1989, a cyberpunk P&P RPG. I'm a huge fan of cyberpunk in general, and I would love to see a Mutant CRPG.

I've recently started playing Ars Magica and I'm loving it, it's an extremely flexible and powerful system

Well, a close race between Midgard and Cyberpunk 2020, but in the end Midgard will stay on top. Just one awesome and extremely flexible game.

I'm torn. I want to say 3rd Edition D&D for all of the fond memories I have of it, but I know that I probably should say G.U.R.P.S. because it really is a great system.

Well, let's go with G.U.R.P.S. so that all the 2nd Edition fanatics won't lynch me. :bolt:

http://www.kraproom.com/pacman/aod/gallery/d/3720-1/rifts.jpg

Mongoose's Runequest II : The successor game to MRQI, and Chaosium's Runequest. It's a good, solid system, skill-based system that allows you to build the character you want. Any and all dice-rolling is pretty simple. The armor/weapon system is also awesome.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons

http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Mage:_The_Ascension

Extremely free form magic system. Easy to exploit but like all things in WoD games, ST has the final say. I know some of the authors co-made one of the magic systems in GURPS 2nd edition. They later took it off and joined WWS.

Dungeons & Dragons v. 3.5.

I'll nominate a great Chaosium game King Arthur Pendragon.
Like all Chaosium games it had a simple but flexible system combined with a well-fleshed out interesting background ( a blend of Malory and other classic medeval writers and Welsh legend for the most part, lightly sprinkled with ideas derived from more modern versions of the King Arthur legend0 and well-written, thought provoking scenarios.

Star Wars Saga Edition. Everything 3.5 and 4th ed should have been.

:slap:

First & Second Edition > *

My vote goes to the HERO system however. A skeleton of a rules framework for all skills and powers that allows for the setup and design of any type of RPG. Champions was a great example of these rules.

Shadowrun. But proir to 4^th edition, becuse I don't know 4^th edition.

best.system.ever. One six sided die was all you'd need to play. -although having fifteen dice and making a throw was kinda fun as well

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Diceless_Roleplaying was friggin' awesome. Especially because the Amber novels were so awesome. But it was also just a great roleplaying system, if you had a decent GM.

4th ed is more or less the same, except that Shadowrun's tech is no longer eclipsed by your local starbucks (The Matrix is wireless now. That means your Decker Hacker now has no reason to stay at home and miss all the fun.

I grew up with AD&D 2nd Edition, and DMed quite a lot of Planescape (a campaign I enjoy to this day even though it's been years since I played). I had a lot of 1st Edition books as well but they seemed a bit picky when it came to the rules - that certainly seemed to be the pinnacle of Gygax's Rules Heavy phase

We messed around with 3rd Edition in college and enjoyed it but we avoided 3.5 like the plague.

Our DM took care of that by always requiring some reason for needing him -me 'on site'. The term isolated system became so much a part of the campain scenery that I once complained that there was a net, y'know?
That was when my character lost the use of his legs in a claymore explosion (spinal damage -no cyberlimbs allowed by my sadist of a DM)
Which basically put me in a wheel chair.. which my sadistic DM said was okay for a hacker, and that I would just need help with stairs (he was having fun with this)

Since my character already had high electronic build/repair, it was fairly easy to slowly reformed him into the groups vehicle rigger as well, with less emphasis on the straight hacking
Starting with my wheelchair, I pimped everything out

I was determned at one stage to finance the creation of a 'budget' AI program named 'Mr. Magoo', using a variety of 'liberated' corporate semi autonomous know-bots, programmed to program better know-bots.

My 'programming plan' was something like twenty pages


I wonder if I still have the character book somewhere..?