GamingTabletopRPG

What are the best tabletop RPGs without a fixed setting?

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Sep 23, 2018

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7 Games Considered

Best tabletop RPGs without a fixed setting	Price	Publisher	Price
-- Fate Core	-	Evil Hat Productions	$25 MSRP, Pay What You Want for PDF
-- Risus	-	–	–
-- Savage Worlds	$9.99	–	–
-- GURPS 4th Edition	-	–	–
-- Tri-Stat dX	$0.00	–	–

Fate Core

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Top Pro

An even more streamlined version is available, called Fate Accelerated

Whereas Fate Core is skill driven, has more variables to keep track of and is potentially more varied in terms characters created, Fate Accelerated is approach driven, has less variables to keep track of and allows getting started quicker. Also, the Accelerated version is just 50 pages whereas the Core version is 310 pages. See More

Top Con

Compel mechanic is not for everyone

Compels allow GM to trigger a player's aspect in exchange for a fate point. The player can avoid invoking noted apect by spending a fate point. Concerns about the system include removing control from the player of how a character is played, GMs having a lot more data to track (each aspect for each player) and possibility of getting stuck in a compel-loop of forcing certain behaviour. See More

Top Pro

Focuses on roleplaying by originating gameplay from world-building

Fate uses "aspects" to influence the gameplay in ways that are consistent with the world that's built. Aspects are descriptive phrases that define anything they are attached to. They give both roleplaying and mechanical advantages and disadvantages. For example, a character could be "raised in a wretched hive of scum and villainy" and that would allow him to better negotiate with thiefs and crooks, but also make him poor at fine dining etiquette. See More

Top Con

It can be difficult to come up with aspects

Coming up with aspects can take a while. Especially for new players. In addition to coming up with traits that define the character, tags and compels are needed. Furthermore all of these little nuances have to be coherent as well as balanced in terms of power. This can make the character creation process take a while. See More

Top Pro

No fixed setting

Fate Core is a general purpose RPG system that can be applied to any theme. See More

Top Pro

Excellent clarity of rules

It starts at the very beginning by explaining what is roleplaying and moves on to introduce various mechanics and conventions and explains why they're there, when's the appropriate time to use them and what are the best practices on how to do it. The book does so in easy to understand language, offers many examples and highlights the important bits in various ways. See More

Risus

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Top Con

Little guidance can be found for GMs and players

Some prior understanding of how an RPG is played and what is the role of the GM is required as the rules cover only the very core of the system. See More

Top Pro

A large following that provides a lot of content

A large amount of adventures, artwork, characters, clichés as well as optional rules can be found for Risus. An excellent resource for all aforementioned things as well as many others is Risusiverse, a fan-made website of all things Risus. See More

Top Pro

Can be taught in less than 10 minutes

Risus has a very minimalist rule system that breaks down all actions to their core function. Risus comes with a super short, four page rulebook (available in many forms and formats) that's easy to read, includes examples and has a bit of humor thrown in to make the process or learning more enjoyable. See More

Top Pro

Very flexible rules

Risus is not confined to a selection of pre-defined character-classes, settings or abilities. Characters are described via clichés such as Witch Doctor, Gambler, Musician with a number of dice assigned to each cliché that are then used in challenges that relate to the appropriate cliché. See More

Savage Worlds

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Fast-paced play

Top Con

Classless

Characters are developed completely independently of any sort of D&D-esque class framework. This allows players to make more free-form characters, but as a result characters which are less focused may be generally weaker. The book does provide a number of "archtype" partial-builds, which can generally serve as an alternative to classes, and Savage Rifts offers the Iconic frameworks, which more closely resembles classes. See More

Top Pro

Companion books with expanded rules to support 4 major genres.

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horrer, and Super Heroes. Each of which can be portrayed in a basic sense with only the core book. See More

Top Pro

Generic rule-set

The rules cater to multiple genres, and offer additional rules for GMs (or players) to create their own races, powers, etc. See More

Top Pro

Quick character generation

A character can be done in 15 minutes. See More

GURPS 4th Edition

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Tri-Stat dX

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Open d6

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Perfect20 System

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