I recently discovered some rpgs that impressed me very much. I won't go into details, because my abilities as an rpg reviewer are (to put it kindly) limited. I just wanted to get the word out. All these games are expensive, but of very high quality, and well worth the money. Check 'em out.

Legend of the Five Rings, Fourth Edition

Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch (all part of the Warhammer 40K universe; my personal favorite is Dark Heresy).

I would dearly love to find an L5R game. Haven't played it, but it looks awesome.

Work up to it with a Kurosawa marathon weekend.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the WH40k rpgs that have been put out, really good quality. Big time into rogue trader stuff, but I'm a huge fan of the age of sails also, and this has the feel to it... in a scifi package.

Just wanted to give an 'attaboy to the folks responsible for Pathfinder. Great game.

I'm more than a little curious about Pathfinder. How does it improve on D&D 3.5?

Pathfinder...not really improved as such, they just took the shit out, and injected so much pure awesome into the 3.5 D20 mechanic that afterward, you can chop down mountains with the flat of your hand.

Yes, it's good. And more importantly, the entire Pathfinder "stuff" is hosted, indexed and searchable in a logical manner by the publishers/developers. Everyone can read the rules, feats and the advanced stuff for character gen and development anywhere with internet access. Buying the books is very useful in running a game (I also love how the GM and player guide are the same volume, basically) and I reccommend doing so, but not essential.

Basic changes: feats every 2nd level, extra hp in some classes, logical skillpoints and a few revised skills (IE: losing Listen, Search and Spot for Perception, combining Move Silently and Hide into Stealth) making professions useful, making linguistics essential, making feats logical and balanced. All classes are playable, survivable and enjoyable. There's no gimp "core" classes (the later "pathfinder flavoured" ones could be very unbalanced, but you have to work at it) and everyone sort of rises in a more enjoyable "powerband" (Ie: the difference between a level 12 Wizard and a level 12 Fighter in battle is less about gear and more about build.).

Had a party of all paladins once - was awesome. Each player had a different build, a different chapter and a different approach, even though it was the same class. Everyone followed the classic "How to play a paladin" rules (IE: announcing an attack, not fighting a helpless foe, that sort of thing) and the thing was, they were all human. Standard racial stocks, no special stats, wildly different and effective characters without relying on the old "my mother was an angel" backstory

Monsters got overhauled (hence the increase in HP for players)

Traits! Awesome flavour bonuses.

Frankly if they'd make DnD 3 like the way Pathfinder is now, you'd not be seeing $th edition, just 20 years of the same mechanic. The nice thing is all those D20 missions you may have forked out for are still useable (and able to be combined with the 2nd ed-> 3rd ed conversion mechanic)

-Tir

Pathfinder I found I liked a lot of the changes in it. The problem I had with it was the group I found that played it and the DM, but that isn't the games fault.

Dark Heresy is a blast, though I am very new to the Warhammer universe.

4E of DnD...fun in a very mindless, generic way.

I loved me some Mage: The ascension I had a hard time managing the other WoW games but Mage just struck a pretty solid chord for me. I still run a game now and again.

I always wanted to play Mage: The Ascension, but never had the opportunity. I still have a ton of books for it.

Pathfinder and L5R have all ready been mentioned, which is great.

D&D 4e I'm on the fence about as it savagely beat 3.5 into pulp and then took all the remaining usable components and rearranged them to "align to grid." What bothers me most about 4th Edition is that the Forgotten Realms were F'ed up beyond recognition. Now that having been said I have played a few good games of D&D4e Hollywood Squares (I'll take behind the Orc to flank) and had some fun.

The game I'm bringing to the tables if Rifts. I've played just a single game, but man are the books a fun lot to read through. Nearly every element of the game has fluff text and a corresponding image which may or may not have accurate stats depending on who wrote it up, generally Kevin Siebieda.

I desperately want to love D&D 4th Edition, because I love tactical combat RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, and X-Com. So every time I look at it I think, "Oh shit, I can run a Dark Sun Final Fantasy Tactics game yay!" and every time I play I remember why I had a sour taste in my mouth the last time. The game seems to promise me more nummies than it delivers.

L5R is fantastic. No matter how badly the "tying the card game to the RPG metaplot" fucked it up in previous editions, 4th rights them. Plus, I have a great love for the 1st edition game: it was the line editor's influence that (inadvertently) got me to go back to college, and to make one of my majors Asian Studies.

A lot of the World of Darkness is worth mentioning. Vampire (I'm more familiar with the Requiem than the masquerade, but thats just me). Scion, also from White Wolf, was a tremendous blast to role-play through.

One of my personal favorites (not so much as a role-playing game though, as goofyness is inherent)---Paranoia.

Some free games that I've been liking. All of these are "rules-light", and tend towards short term play (1 sesson, or a handful of sessions), making them good for a night where some people can't show up for the regular game, or just for a quick change of pace. Most of these are good for more casual "booze 'n' dice" play:

• Lady Blackbird - no-prep, steampunk adventure
• Danger Patrol - High action, 30's style pulp sci-fi
• 44 - A game of automatic fear - High paranoia, 1950's style "everyone is being replaced by replicas", no-prep, one-shot
• Wushu Open - High action, over-the-top, stunt driven, kung-fu.
• Geiger Counter - Single session, prep-at-the-table, survival horror

Also, some non-free games that may interest Shadowrun players:

• 3:16 - Carnage Among the Stars - Space Troopers killing bugs all across the cosmos.
• Blowback - Effectively Burn Notice: the RPG
• Lacuna Part 1 - "Sinister secret agents with shadowy employers and mysterious pasts. A bizarre landscape built from six- billion human minds. Arachnid-headed beings that guard a war-torn borderzone."

Stars Without Number, a superb space-opera sci-fi RPG inspired by old-school D&D, Classic Traveller and newer sci-fi.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess, my favorite D&D-type game with a horror/weird-fantasy theme.

Just to add to my rather perfuntory note: I think that Pathfinder captures the...what's the right word...ambience?atmosphere?...of 1st ed AD&D far better than the current 4th ed does.

Star Wars Saga edition is great. It is based on d20, rules similar to 3rd edition D&D. It came out around the time of 3.5 and incorporates some 4.0 rule concepts, such as Saving throws are gone, instead you have an effective Armor Class against different types of attacks, including jedi powers. There are a plethora of expansions, allowing for play in the movie's era, the Old Republic, or a later setting that appears in many of the novels.

There is a Star Wars tactical board game that I have not played, but is a great resource for maps, placables and figures you can use when playing Saga edition.

Oh and Pathfinder = Goodness. It is really what 4th edition would have been if WoW had not been so popular and lured D&D makers into wanting to dumb down the game for more general consumption.

I played some Masquerade and really enjoyed the roleplaying. Did not play it enough to get a feel for the rules, so I cant say if I like the system, but the different vampire types really cater to a political intrigue/ Player secretly against Player type adventure.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), WotC's Star Wars license expired in May 2010 and they opted not to renew. Dunno who, if anyone, is going to take up the Star Wars RPG banner.

Star Wars d6 redux?

That would be completely awesome, but alas it will never happen.

So, I will have to stick with my old D6 books instead I just pretend D20 star wars never existed, which is easy, because I believe it's pretty much universally panned?

I dunno, I found it fairly decent during the few sessions I played. I don't think it does a good job of portraying Jedi as the nigh-unstoppable badasses they are in the films, but I chalk that up to a limitation of the medium: you have to make all the classes playable, which necessarily entails balancing them out. I would dearly love to see a Star Wars RPG in a skill-based system similar to Shadowrun or L5R, however.

oWoD Werewolf the Apocalypse: Savage Horror ftw!

Other then that I'm very fond of the Ars Magica games and of course Shadowrun 3rd edition

Call of Cthulhu (the real one by Chaosium, not the disaster that was WotC's D20 version) is still one of my favourites. I still fondly remember my mobster con artist. After a horribly botched Sanity check, the poor sod developed a second personality - that of a little girl. Every time he was put in a stressful situation, it was a d% roll to see if he changed personalities or not. Had to maintain two different character sheets for him. One for himself with all of his regular skills, and one for the little girl who had the same characteristic scores, but a completely different (albeit very useful at times) set of skills that had their own checks and advancement.

Pathfinder has been a lot of fun, too. My group tried 4th edition, laughed at the mess they made of it, then found that Pathfinder was basically D&D 3.75.

I liked the West-End Games Starwars version better as well. D20 with their class based system just didn't fit..