What Do You Think Of This Top 25 RPGs List?
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Recently, I wrote a post about “My Top 25 Roleplaying Games Of All Time”. This was in response to Zachary’s post at RPG Blog II about the Top 25 Roleplaying Games. He had 150 entries into the contest. It was by no means a scientific poll about roleplaying games, but I think he got a pretty good response and outcome with the whole thing.The main issue some people seemed to have brought up were whether or not you should consider different editions from one game as separate entries. For example, do you count Dungeons & Dragons as one game for the list, or each separate edition as one game for the list (totaling multiple different entries). Here are the final results:
Top 25 RPGs Project Final Rankings:
1 – Basic/Original D&D
2 – Call of Cthulhu
3 – Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition
4 – Traveller (Classic)
5 – Star Wars (West End Games/d6)
6 – Dungeons & Dragons 3.0/3.5
7 – GURPS 3e
8 – Tunnels & Trolls
9 – Champions
10 – RuneQuest (majority of 85% favored 2nd Edition)
11 – Vampire: the Masquerade
12 – Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition
13 – Gamma World (1st/2nd Editions)
14 – Shadowrun 3e
15 – Pendragon (Chaosium editions)
16 – Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing 1st Edition
17 – Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP)
18 – Savage Worlds
19 – Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition
20 – Amber
21 – Rifts
22 – Hackmaster
23 – Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP)
24 – Star Frontiers
25 – RisusI love this list because it gives a little validation to a few things I have stated previously on this blog. First, there is only one way to play Star Wars and that is using the D6 ruleset. Two, Shadowrun 4th Edition sucks!
If you count Dungeons & Dragons entry, instead of doing each edition separately, here is what the Top 10 RPGs would have turned out to be:
1 – Dungeons and Dragons
2 – Call of Cthulhu
3 – Traveller
4 – Star Wars
5 – GURPs
6 – Tunnels and Trolls
7 – Champions
8 – Runequest
9 – Vampire the Masquerade
10 – GammaworldOverall, I generally agree with how both lists turned out. Some of these games I personally didn’t rank very high because I don’t like them or I never played them. There were actually two or three that I had never even heard of, so it shows I still have a lot to learn about roleplaying.
What do you think of this Top 25 RPGs list?
Leave a Comment
April 28, 2009 at 12:34 am
If you’re going to put 3rd above 4th fine, but you can’t put it THAT far apart. If you don’t like 4e, just be honest and take it off the list
I would put AD&D at the top, its far more relevant historically then Basic.
April 28, 2009 at 5:06 am
Dude, that list is the final ranking of 150 different people’s rankings of their top 25 RPGs. It’s not a matter of honesty, it’s that 4e is just not as popular as 3.
Personally I go with D&D as separate entries approach, because the games are substantially different. There are versions I would happily run, versions that I’d play in but wouldn’t GM, and versions that I wouldn’t touch with the proverbial 10-foot pole. If I regarded them as one lump, it might not even make my top 25…it certainly wouldn’t be in the top 3 (as it was when I voted).
Joshua’s last blog post..I Need A Miracle
April 28, 2009 at 6:25 am
Well, I did the honorable mentions for folks who wanted to combine D&D into one entry. In that case, games like Boot Hill, Castles & Crusades, etc., move up accordingly.
A couple of things to remember in regards to 4e’s placing: this was a list of people from in and around the RPG Bloggers Network representing their top games. It isn’t meant to be scientific, just a fun surveying of what’s been the best RPG for people in terms of fun, entertainment, and inspiration. A lot of these folks are seasoned gamers, who have seen a lot of things come and go. 4e hasn’t been out that long yet, and if anything, I would think it would be a testament to it that it’s already on some folks’ list. Time will tell if it moves up or off the list.
Zachary’s last blog post..One-Page Introduction to Old School Gaming
April 28, 2009 at 9:56 am
Like I said, I loved the overall results because I felt it validated some things I had stated before. I also have more respect for opinions from people on the RPG Bloggers Network than I do in most forums.
April 28, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I definitely like that top 10 list at the end. I can see why some of my favorites aren’t closer to the top but damn I think Gammaworld was an awesome system….we should resurrect it!
April 30, 2009 at 5:58 am
I think knowing the criteria that people used when voting would be very interesting. Are we talking about the most important RPGs? The most innovative, fun or simply what you like playing the most.
I imagine that in a ranking of innovation and importance oD&D ranks way up at the top. However, I’m surprised to see it at the top here. How many people who voted for it are still actually playing it?
April 30, 2009 at 11:24 am
@ Bryan – Had to go pull some Gammaworld stuff out just to see what we’re missing. I miss their crazy character generation in the earlier editions.
@ Nicholas – I hadn’t thought about that and actually totally agree. I had a mix of criteria for myself. I didn’t vote on any game I hadn’t played. I knew Amber diceless would make the list, and I considered it a top game, but I haven’t played it.
I suspect most people took the games that they knew about and ranked them in the order they liked. Maybe a different list ranking them in the order of how innovative and important they were to the roleplaying industry would be another neat poll?
April 30, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Well, bear in mind that the people who responded are self-selected: people who read the blog, or who were pointed there by people who read the blog.
Most of the people who read the blog are longtime gamers.
It’s not that 3e is that much more popular than 4e… it’s that 3e is that much more popular among those who responded. What’s even more popular? 1e. And more popular than that? Original. This is not reflective of the real world — I guarantee you that there are more people playing 3e and 4e than 1e and OD&D. Just not among those who replied to this poll.
Further indications of this are the presence of Traveller classic at such a high position on the list, the placement of GURPS 3e (not 4e), the placement of Tunnels & Trolls, and the placement of Champions (not HERO).
Nothing wrong with that — I think it’s pretty cool that there were over 150 responses. But taking that as any sort of broader indication, beyond “what readers of the blog and their friends think”, would be foolish. It’s not broad-based or scientific, and was never intended to be. It’s just reflective of the readership.
May 3, 2009 at 7:50 am
I agree that there are points of self-validation to be found in the list….and I was one of those that responded to Zach stating that I chose to look at D&D as a whole rather than each edition. Same thing for Champions, Gamma, Traveller, Shadowrun, Vampire, etc…
I feel that the different editions either revised that which was already there (TORG 1.5) or that is took the same general concept and modernized it some for either mechanics or core concepts (SR 3e vs 4e may be good examples in both of those cases).
Everyone will have their favorites…I hate 3e maybe because I started in OE and 1st AD&D years, who knows?
Overall I chose to look at this as a list of favortie games that I have enjoyed over the decades and I am very glad that people find this all worthy of discussing!
May 7, 2009 at 5:27 am
@Samuel Van Der Wall: I think if you started asking people what they are actually playing (or what they played in the last few months) the results would be very different. In theory people should be playing what they like, with some exceptions. There’s a strange combination of elitism and nostalgia that makes people vote for games they don’t play anymore or maybe never played.