Nonterran high magic pre-musket fantasy games

>>51937865
Gurps is setting agnostic. It does fantastic history pretty well, any age.

>>51937884
Fantastic history?

You mean alt. History?

>>51937897
I mean what you described. Pre gunpowder, high fantasy, nonterran

>>51937925
Ah.

Which books would you suggest? Low tech, fantasy, and what for magic?

>>51937954
Depends on what you want to do with magic. Basic set is simple "learn a skill, do a spell" stuff. Magic is a big expansion of that list. Thaumaturgy will help you build a specific magic system if you have something more esoteric in mind. I've always felt the simplest solution is to go the Powers route, and just make magic superheroes. Buy advantages at a discount->get effect.

What's your setting like?

>>51937997
Undecided. I figured I would take a look at my various options for systems and make a setting based on what seems cool.

>>51938020
Ah neat. I did that with my recent game too. I settled on "Magic is powers" and added on flavored talents loosely based on elemental themes. So people buy flight, or some kind a fireball attack, etc. And then they also need magical talent relevant to said power. It's kinda like a built in unusual background, and it lets folks simply buy what they want to have.

Definitely look at the books tho. Good reads, at a minimum.

>>51937865
Earth Dawn, Palladium and Talislanta.

What makes them good are the games we run and the people we play them with. RPGs are about you and your group.

>>51938164
>What makes it good is the group and the GM.
I'm asking what makes the system options good.
Because yes, I could run anything, but I'd like to run something different, and hopefully find a game we like that will become a recurring system.

>>51938250
Well ok, then here are the ones I like or have played extensively (+GURPS):

Talislanta: 100 races, each one a class. Non-standard fantasy world--no elves, dwarves or even humans.

Earthdawn: Lizard people! Skyships! Lizard-people-pirates-in-skyships! Ritual magic that takes forever, does nothing, then everyone casting it dies!

Palladium: Do you like rifts, but also hate fun? Have I got a deal for you. Break out your hundred-sided die.

Gurps: Is your favorite flavor of ice cream vanilla? Do you lack imagination and personality? Would your friends describe you as bland, if you had any? Welcome to the Gurps team.

Amber Diceless: Has crunch. Has no dice (nor dice-substituting gimmick). Your warfare is better than mine? Ok: you won the swordfight. Based on the series of novels you should have if you're on /tg/

Lords of Gossamer & Shadow: An Amber Diceless clone that takes it out of the setting of the World of Amber and puts it into one that makes no fucking sense and is awesome.

Stormbringer: The world of Elric. And percentile dice. And a system for character corruption. Oh and it sucks.

Burning Wheel

Very different from anything d20 though. Classless but not really, narrative-heavy, default setting is basically Middle-earth with more sword and sorcery. Non-human races (dwarves, elves, orcs) are very strong but have a mechanic that will kill them at some point.

>>51938567
>>51938507
Sounds like the better options are Talislanta and Burning Wheel.

What's wrong with GURPS? It seems less like vanilla ice cream, and more like ice cream making supplies and several containers of flavors, no?

Amber dice less sounds iffy. That "no chance involved" approach seems questionable.

>>51939077
Talislanta is rad. I haven't played it in a decade, but a recent thread (>>51858936) has reminded me that it's super-fucking-awesome. The system isn't great, which is a problem. But when faced with so much awesome? Eh. That's a minor complaint.

I'm not the Burning Wheel anon. Never read or played it.

For Amber Diceless to be fun, you have to _love_ the Amber series so much that you and your friends want to perform communal fanfic. And for LoGaS to be good, you have to have loved performing Amber fanfic so much that you want to explore the same thing all over, outside the same world. Like a fanfic of a fanfic. Basically you should be forty, a virgin, and have a dog named Betsy.

GURPS just feels samey, no matter what you're playing. Cyberpunk GURPS feels like WWII-wank GURPS feels like fantasy GURPS feels like mecha GURPS feels that one time you were fifteen and horny and made a female character then sat around with a buncha dude friends role-playing rape scenes GURPS. It's just really bland. Every mechanic feels like it works, and no mechanics feel like they were made to do what you're doing. I don't know how to explain it--it just makes rules not-fun.