Cast Your Votes for the Top 25 RPGs

Mad Brew

Zachary, over at the RPB Blog II, has built a mighty big list of roleplayer’s favortite RPGs.  You’ve seen (if you haven’t, you should) his Great RPG Tournament, where the best RPG (Hackmaster) was determined by the roll of dice.  But now you, the reader, can proclaim your favortie roleplaying game and cast your votes to determine which RPGs are the Top 25 of All Time.

As far as how each RPG gets scored, I’ll post the words of Zachary himself:

I’m looking for people’s lists of the RPGs that have had the brought the most influence, entertainment, and fun to their experience in the gaming hobby. You can rank up to 25 games, but if you don’t want to do that many or don’t have that many, please rank at least 10. I will be tabulating points wherein a 1st-place vote gets 25 points, a 2nd- place vote gets 24, on down to a 25th-place vote getting 1 point (not unlike the AP Football poll).

The poll goes live today and will remain open for two weeks.  Head over there now and put in a good word for your favorite RPG.  It is an excellent opportunity to introduce and discuss some roleplaying games that may be flying under the radar or forgotten in the sands of time.

Here is my list:

1. D&D 3.0/3.5
2. Original Dungeons & Dragons
3. Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition
4. Vampire: the Masquerade
5. New World of Darkness
6. Call of Cthulhu
7. Savage Worlds
8. Rolemaster
9. MERP
10. Rifts
11. d6 Star Wars
12. Mutants & Masterminds
13. Hero System/Champions
14. Alpha Omega
15. GURPS
16. Warhammer FRPG
17. Dark Heresy
18. Deadlands
19. Ars Magica
20. Pendragon
21. All Flesh Must Be Eaten
22. Castles & Crusades
23. Pathfinder RPG
24. Traveller
25. RuneQuest

Special Notes

Original Dungeons & Dragons: The most influential RPG in history, hands down. Because it was the first popular published RPG and has spawned 4 1/2 direct descedent editions of the RPG with the most market share. It’s where the whole hobby started, and for that we owe it some appreciation.

D&D 3.5: It gave use the OGL, and through the OGL a record number of supporting third party material. It is responsible for changing the publishing paradigm from closely guarded licensing to open source. And even with 4e in full swing, the 3.5 crowd still commands a surprising share of the hobby.

Call of Cthulhu: The most terrifying RPG in the history of table top. White Wolf may have broke into the mainstream with its gothic-punk brands, but Chaosium still owns the horror genre. CoC is responsible for bringing the horror of Lovecraft to many unsuspecting (and now insane) game tables.

Vampire: The Masquerade: VtM, and its sister settings, brought the ability to cast yourself as one of the hallmark monsters of horror. White Wolf also brought the play style of storytelling mainstream, regardless of the fact that the rules were actually a power gamer’s dream.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten: How can you not like a game where you become the meal of George Romero’s most popular antagonists? Possibly the flagship title of Eden Studio’s Unisystem, AFMBE is a landmark in the world of roleplaying.

Listening to: Devildriver – The Last Kinds Words – Burning Sermon

2 thoughts on “Cast Your Votes for the Top 25 RPGs”

  2. @TheLemming: THAT is a most excellent question. I love Pathfinder and is surely my preferred system right now. However, I placed them towards the end because Zachary has said he was looking for the most influential, entertaining, and fun RPG in my experience.

    So, in my experience 3.5 has been the #1 most influential and I have probably gamed the most with that system. Another reason I didn’t place Pathfinder nearer the top is simply because it is still in Beta and the true release won’t be until August.

    And really, though I tried to rank them honestly, there is technically only about 10 positions with many of these fine games locked in ties with each other.

    Thanks for asking!

    Reply

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