I’m a fan of old-school Shadowrun (2nd ed.); it didn’t matter how bad-ass your character was, you could get killed by a lucky shot from a punk with a zipgun. It kept the grime of Cyperpunk, and added fantastical elements to it. IMO, it required more role-playing than is strictly necessary in a lot of D&D games, because going in guns blazing all the time was almost certain to lead to death; properly played (IMO), the GM should be brutal in how they handle stupid players.
While indeed it can get pretty extreme, it’s also so fun to roll handful of dices. This is one of the reason I find dice-pool fun (and not just better statistically speaking)
It’s sister setting, Earthdawn, also had a lot going for it on top of the typical D&D formula. Weaving, instead of casting magic, was a much more involved process for the player/character which did a lot to ground such awesome power. At the same time, fighters of all stripes were also more or less magic users, which unified the whole rule system in a nice way. The setting itself was a fantasy post-apocalypse, troubled by evil horrors that dominated the landscape in the centuries before. In fact, much of the lore was intertwined with how people survived those times.
And like Shadowrun, there were lots of dice thanks to the “step table” system. It could be a huge PITA to sum all the rolls on high steps, but then when else do you get to roll entire fists full of dice all at once?
I’m a fan of old-school Shadowrun (2nd ed.); it didn’t matter how bad-ass your character was, you could get killed by a lucky shot from a punk with a zipgun. It kept the grime of Cyperpunk, and added fantastical elements to it. IMO, it required more role-playing than is strictly necessary in a lot of D&D games, because going in guns blazing all the time was almost certain to lead to death; properly played (IMO), the GM should be brutal in how they handle stupid players.
The downside was so many six sided dice.
While indeed it can get pretty extreme, it’s also so fun to roll handful of dices. This is one of the reason I find dice-pool fun (and not just better statistically speaking)
It’s sister setting, Earthdawn, also had a lot going for it on top of the typical D&D formula. Weaving, instead of casting magic, was a much more involved process for the player/character which did a lot to ground such awesome power. At the same time, fighters of all stripes were also more or less magic users, which unified the whole rule system in a nice way. The setting itself was a fantasy post-apocalypse, troubled by evil horrors that dominated the landscape in the centuries before. In fact, much of the lore was intertwined with how people survived those times.
And like Shadowrun, there were lots of dice thanks to the “step table” system. It could be a huge PITA to sum all the rolls on high steps, but then when else do you get to roll entire fists full of dice all at once?
I never had a chance to try Earthdawn, but it looked like a lot of fun.