RPGS that you want to like but....

Sure! I like the flat math, for one. My highest skill is rank 2, everything else is 0 or untrained. My highest ability modifier is +1. I love the method for rolling hp where higher rolls replace your hp, not add to it. Even though I had terrible luck and only gained 1 hp per level until I finally rolled really well and got 18 hp at level 6. This keeps fights very deadly but I can at least take 2 or 3 hits. Combats never drag on too long because how low the hp is. I like the retainer system (I'm aware other games have this but I've never played those or the GM never used them so it was my first experience). I love the magic system. You have very limited castings but spells are very powerful, so picking to prepare the right spells and knowing when to use them is very satisfying. (I really dislike systems like 5e and Pathfinder where you have spells like Bless where you get like +1 to one roll or something. Makes magic feel very cheap. Give me 2 or 3 spells but I can fly for hours or do 10d8 to constructs or something lol.) I like cantrips have a separate magic system called Arts. The spell names are very flavorful and fun. I like that attacks are 1d20 but skills are 2d6. That's all I can think of right now.

Didn't help that my real life group has 5-6 players, so at any time there were a lot of successes between them. I've heard the system runs a lot better with a lower player count, but I'm not about to disinvite friends so the system runs better.

Damnit, now I've got that in my head.

I think you nailed it for me, too, Nezz. :)

I also love the open sandbox feel, which maybe Harrigan is mistaking for cat litter. ;) Just kidding!

🤣😁😂

Nice -- sounds quite cool. I should give the damned thing a read. I just struggle mightily with Crawford's writing style...

BTW, that style of hit point increase is my very favorite in all the OSR. Really good stuff...

You're welcome!

I haven't read the whole things because it's quite massive, but the character creation and rules are only the first 60 pages, 93 pages if you include the magic system too. It was pretty easy to read although it is wordier than it needs to be. I agree about the HP, it's very slick.

That method dates all the way back to OD&D and people arguing it should be done that way, rather than just adding a new die every level... because the rules were vague. It's also present in a ton of White Box-based games.

Nobilis seemed to have an awesome premise, and was intriguing due to being diceless. But each time I try to read it, I give up very soon because it's not easily approachable. So I am bouncing off this one even before playing.

Universalis. A game system meant for a lot of flexibility and universality, with people 'voting' with their coins for what each one of them considers important in a scene or worldbuilding. In practice, the worldbuilding phase felt like everyone was incentivised to add a gotcha twist to a previous setting fact by flying just narrowly around it and adding something subversive. Another player made a comment along the lines of 'the ruleset of Universalis is getting in the way of the playstyle of Universalis'. The bidding mechanics for resolution of disputes (IC and meta) seemed like a cool idea, but felt clunky in practice and mathematically suspect (though by now I forgot the details).

LANCER. This only applies to the setting, not the mechanics (I love the mechanics). In a medium where everyone publishes yet another grimdark / dystopia / post-apoc, I was cheerful to find a game that brands itself optimistic. However, upon closer examination, it became hard for me to take all the eutopian claims at face value, as the description of the Union (the designated big good faction) came out as either self-contradictory/inconsistent (branded as post-scarcity and with reduced private ownership, and yet megacorps seem to play a huge role in the Union, and there's a lot of artificial scarcity through licensing), hegemonic, expansionist, and self-righteous. This makes it hard to take the proclaimed eutopianism and goodness as written, which clashes strongly with the authorial stance that none of the descriptions are propaganda/satire/overhyped.

Mindjammer. A vaguely posthumanistic setting in the vein of Culture for FATE? Count me i . . . wait a minute. The alleged big good is memetically genocidal towards any creeds except government-approved ones to a dogmatic level, the techology seems to be spread in an oddly top-down manner, and the former two points combine to undermine posthuman stuff in an oddly WH40k-reminiscent manner. And there's a designated villainous faction that looks like a parody of WH40k. And then the system, which seems to have a stovepipe design antipattern: lots of minor subsystems for all sorts of activities that are based on overarching principles, each repeating many of the same words, but often with small differences, so it's difficult to memorise and inconvenient to look up, and hard to consider when deciding what kind of character you want.

Continuum/Narcissist/Seedless Bloom/Splintered Rose. Cool ideas about time travel. Extremely unhelpful manner of explaining the timeline cosmology/physics (a lot of the basics only become clear only after you read advanced supplemental material).