What are the best tabletop RPGs without a fixed setting?

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Jul 9, 2021

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7 Games Considered

Best tabletop RPGs without a fixed setting	Price	PDF price	Price
-- Savage Worlds	$9.99	$ 9,99	-
-- Fate Core	-	-	$25 MSRP, Pay What You Want for PDF
-- Risus	-	-	-
-- GURPS 4th Edition	-	-	-
-- Open d6	-	-	-

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score 6 · Answer 1

Savage Worlds

Top Pro

Quick character generation

A character can be done in 15 minutes. See More

Top Con

Price

While I love SWADE. The pricing between Pinnacle's website, amazon and Drivethrurpg are more swingy than combat in Savage Rifts! Plus the secondary market has gotten out of hand with opportunist pricing. Their 3rd party business model leads to another wide swing in quality from one setting to another. There are some cool indy SW games on the market. But as a guideline I tend to stick with Pinnacle products. See More

Malcolm Merlyn's Experience

I have used it for XCOM inspired game last week and the game feels like a breeze. See More

Specs

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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 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

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

GM-friendly

Spend less time on rules and more on the story. See More

Top Pro

Fast-paced play

Top Pro

Classless system

Without the restrictions of a class, you can build a character more to your liking, to fill any archetype you can come up with - although you kinda need some of the supplements to do this well. See More

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score 5 · Answer 2

Fate Core

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

Not for passive players

If you find your players passive and unwilling to take an active role in creating game world then the experience may be not as enjoyable as it could be. See More

Specs

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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

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

Easy tests resolution

Fate dices are easy and fun to use See More

Top Con

Atypical dices

Fate dices aren't common, so you must buy them specifically for this game See More

Top Pro

Straightforward and Flexible

The system is great for moderating a session of roleplaying. Bring your own setting, and any additional gameplay your group enjoys. It lends itself well to those without the money to invest in miniatures, game boards, or even tables. 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

Multiple settings available for free

If you have problems creating your own game world there are a lot of settings available for free and they range from fantasy to Soviet-era pulp sci-fi, so everyone can find something for himself. 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

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score 3 · Answer 3

Risus

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 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

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

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

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score 5 · Answer 4

GURPS 4th Edition

Top Pro

Long character creation creates a bond with your character

Spending a lot of time creating your character also helps with creating a bond with them. This way you will be more encouraged to keep them alive than going around doing dangerous things which would most likely end up killing them. See More

Top Con

Option paralysis

Sometimes having so many dials to turn is not a good thing. It can be hard to create a game with so many options available. See More

TactfulHumbaba's Experience

GURPS may be a bit too "crunchy" for some people, but in my opinion it's the best genre-independent system around, giving players immense flexibility in character creation while only requiring a few basic game mechanics be learned. And the vast library of GURPS-specific worldbooks are excellent, even for use with other RPG systems. See More

Top Pro

Great sourcebooks

GURPS sourcebooks are famous for being comprehensive guides to the settings/genres they describe, to the degree that even people who don't play GURPS find them useful. See More

Top Con

Rules too crunchy

Top Pro

Modular rules

GURPS can be as crunchy as you like, with rules available to cover any situation, but at its core, there are only about three rules you need. See More

Top Con

Long character creation

The lion's share of the work in GURPS is front-loaded: characters are built on points, pieced together with attributes, advantages, disadvantages, quirks, skills, powers, spells, cybernetics, and whatever else your game requires. Expect to spend easily an hour or more creating your character. See More

Top Pro

Character mortality

In GURPS, characters can be killed by a single blow to the head with a wood plank. For gamers seeking a more "realistic" level of mortality, GURPS is your game. See More

Top Con

Core rules need two books

Top Pro

Option for cinematic rules

There is an option to make combat far less deadly. See More

Top Con

Extremely simulationist

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Answer 5

Open d6

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score 1 · Answer 6

Tri-Stat dX

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Answer 7

Perfect20 System

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7 Games Considered

My Recommendation for Savage Worlds

My Recommendation for Savage Worlds

Quick character generation

Price

Companion books with expanded rules to support 4 major genres

Classless

Generic rule-set

GM-friendly

Fast-paced play

Classless system

My Recommendation for Fate Core

My Recommendation for Fate Core

Focuses on roleplaying by originating gameplay from world-building

Not for passive players

An even more streamlined version is available, called Fate Accelerated

It can be difficult to come up with aspects

Easy tests resolution

Atypical dices

Straightforward and Flexible

Compel mechanic is not for everyone

Multiple settings available for free

No fixed setting

Excellent clarity of rules

My Recommendation for Risus

My Recommendation for Risus

A large following that provides a lot of content

Little guidance can be found for GMs and players

Very flexible rules

Can be taught in less than 10 minutes

My Recommendation for GURPS 4th Edition

My Recommendation for GURPS 4th Edition

Long character creation creates a bond with your character

Option paralysis

Great sourcebooks

Rules too crunchy

Modular rules

Long character creation

Character mortality

Core rules need two books

Option for cinematic rules

Extremely simulationist

My Recommendation for Open d6

My Recommendation for Open d6

My Recommendation for Tri-Stat dX

My Recommendation for Tri-Stat dX

My Recommendation for Perfect20 System

My Recommendation for Perfect20 System

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