Your most loved and most hated systems

[Charon]

Alright, I know that I personally love the way some systems work, and hate the way other systems work. And I know I'm not alone in this, so here's a list of why our favorite systems are our favorites, and why our least favorite are.

Old World of Darkness: A pretty bad system in my opinion. When rolling eight dice isn't an absolute guarantee for one success we have a problem. In short, the success system fails, hard. Also, never get into combat unless you want to spend the next five hours taking care of the 2v3. God help you if you ever get into bigger combat. Also, appearance is the most useless stat... ever... EVER. But I don't play OWoD for the rolls.

Aberrant: Does much better with the success system, but the success system still sucks. Appearance is made... a little more useful. The powers are fun and quirky which is a definate plus. It's the best 'superheroes' system I've run across. That being said, every character is either a glass cannon or a steel wall, there is no happy medium. Also, Taint is the most useless thing ever. In the dozens upon dozens of sessions of Aberrant I've played the only time I've seen someone gain taint was either through GM manipulation or voluntarily.

D&D/D20: Played it only a few times (gasp!). A decent system that works pretty well. Rolling for your stats blows chunks though. A very convoluted system that if you pay attention to all the rules can quickly suck you into a vortex of doom. Combat varies from forever to blink and you miss it, which is good. Also, I hate having to use 30 different types of dice.

Torg: A pretty good system overall. Definately a very interesting way of doing things that works out very well. There's lots of range for characters. I really can't think of anything bad to say about it, though I haven't played more than a few sessions. The card system kicks ass and die rolling works pretty well.

GURPS: How can three little D6 do so much? I mean really? It's amazing. Another favorite of mine, GURPS allows a very wide array of characters and has a shitload of ready built powers and abilities to affix to your character, generally for pretty reasonable prices. If you can't build what your thinking of with GURPS, you're not trying hard enough or haven't thought it through well enough. My only qualms with the system is that it takes FOREVER to build a character (though I kind of like how long it takes. It makes you build your character's personality as well. It makes sure this is more than just another cardboard cut-out). Also, the way skills are done there is pretty much very little point in rolling because you're either guaranteed to succeed or guaranteed to fail. There is an area where your skills are that it is up in the air if you will or not, but it's very easy to step out of that area. Like D&D the game can either be very simple or very very complex.

Legend of the Five Rings: By far my favorite system that I've played, ever. The roll/keep method works amazingly well. Giving you a general idea of what you as a character are capable of while still giving you enough leeway to either suck it up or do amazingly well. The ONLY gripe I have about this system is that the flanking is screwed up. Yeah, that's the only gripe.