I got started on Palladium Fantasy, Rifts, and Heroes Unlimited. I’ve dabbled in Vampire: The Masquerade and Changeling. Now I focus on D&D 3.5 . I’m interested in trying Legend of the Five Rings; I hear that it’s amazing if you have a good GM.
There were supposed to be missions after the briefings? I guess one really does learn something new every day.
From what I understand of Paranoia, if your GM was winging it, then he was doing his job correctly. 
Man, I want to play Paranoia so much. Right now my only RPG experience is D&D 3.5, although I do have the Feng Shui and Wheel of Time D20 sourcebooks as well.
That’s the one I was thinking of when I said “Gamma Worlds”. It was Star Frontiers with the ape-man and needle gun.
Well, every now and then, the GM would come up with a new and fun way to kill us all that involved being someplace else.
Oh, I remembered that I played one session of some kind of Lord of the Rings-based RPG. This was back in high school (late 90’s), though IIRC the game we were playing was from the 80’s. I didn’t like it, because the GM had waaaay too much work to do with tables. We would roll for an attack, then he would look up that number on a table for the weapon, then compare that number to a table for the creature, then roll again and look at a table to see where it was hit, then consult a table for the location to see the damage and roll to see on that table to see if there was addition effects, like reduced movement from hitting a leg. Just too damn complicated.
That sounds like MERP (Middle Earth Roleplay) from Iron Crown Enterprises.
Lots of detail in the combat system, but that level of detail slows stuff down, as you noted.
There is also Rifts from Palladium, for the sci-fi RPG crowd.
Geez, time to think back…
AD&D - First edition and second edition, but I’ve never played third outside of a computer game even though I own the core rulebooks. Around the time that second edition hit my tastes were changing to more setting focused games or ones with better mechanics so for a long while I wouldn’t touch D&D with a ten foot pole. At this point I’d play a game (rather than role-playing) focussed session of third, but it would be far from my first choice.
Vampire and Werewolf - I had friends heavily into the Worlds of Darkness stuff so I played a session or two of these. It wasn’t to my tastes.
Call of Cthulhu - By far my favorite. Part of that may be this was my first RPG after D&D and the BRP system it used was elegant compared to the mass of D&D rules (it’s a little clunky compared to modern systems but I like any RPG where I can explain the mechanics in five sentences or less).
Toon - I had the good fortune of playing this with Greg Costikyan, one of the creators of the game, a few years ago at Origins and had quite a bit of fun. Of course, I wanted to play his other masterpiece…
Paranoia - Loving this game is mandatory, citizen.
Big Eyes, Small Mouth - I tried to set up a space opera campaign using this system before. It didn’t last long, but the system was good.
DC Heroes - I was given the core books and a ton of supplemental material for DC Heroes so I ran a few sessions of it. I recall this ended badly when after letting the Joker get away because of a prank bomb scare they didn’t stop the real bomb the Joker later set up (“I’m not falling for that again!”).
I must be missing a dozen games that I played just one session of…
Dungeons & Dragons The original, from a photocopied version of the rules, when photocopies were relatively novel, through the current 3.5 version of the rules. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Gamma World The original (not Metamorphosis Alpha, though) through the third edition of the game.
Star Frontiers Still got a warm spot in my heart for this game. It was illogical and suffered from a very poor understanding of physics and perilously poor support from TSR, but it was still a lot of fun.
RuneQuest Third edition, both in Glorantha and in a more generic fantasy world. Some of the best games and campaigns of my youth.
Champions Many versions, up to and including the new Hero 5.0 system, which is much broader in scope than just superheroes.
GURPS The poor man’s Hero System. Still, excellent sourcebooks and many, many hours of fun. It was my system of choice for many years.
Mage: The Ascension, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Vampire: The Masquerade aka the World of Darkness. Fun, but mechanically stillborn. You just can’t mix genres in that system and hope for anything remotely resembling balance.
Deadlands Played a little. Good fun, though.
Twilight: 2000 Far too much scrounging and counting bullets to be fun.
Dark Conspiracy Could have been a great game, but was hampered by fairly cruddy rules. Setting had a lot going for it, though.
Call of Cthulhu A classic. Simple and fun. Doesn’t really lend itself to campaign play, however, since players tend to die horribly the first time they run into something nasty. Or go insane. Or both.
Big Eyes, Small Mouth Meh.
Toon I just didn’t “get” this game. I guess the point is just to screw around and come up with as many cartoon cliches as you can?
Top Secret Fun idea, awful system.
Traveller The classic space opera game. Not my favorite system, nor my favorite setting, but had some good times playing.
Traveller: 2300 (a.k.a. 2300 AD) Very gritty and realistic sci fi setting with lots of fun toys and a believable enemy. Pretty much just Aliens, though, when you get right down to it.
HERO System The most comprehensive and mechanically viable system in roleplaying, in my opinion, but it’s an order of magnitude more work for the GM than any other system, with the possible exception of GURPS (which is basically the same thing, but not as well thought-out).
Star Wars (the West End Games version) Surprisingly good system. It worked really well until a Jedi got into the mix, at which point the games tended to be, “Stand around and watch the Jedi do their thing,” for all the non-Jedi. The d20 version never seemed very interesting, but, then by that point, Lucas had totally ruined the SW universe for me anyway.
Paranoia Great game, tons of fun. Takes a fair number of players and a certain mindset.
Middle Earth Role Playing I’m pretty sure the system for this game was written by sadists.
Space Master See the previous entry.
Savage Worlds Current system of choice. Rules-light, fast-paced, and reasonably robust. The only game system I’ve ever seen where you can easily prevent the players from fighting every fight to the death. Scales somewhat poorly, though.
Edit, because I forgot Paranoia, MERP, and Space Master.
Many of mine have already been noted, but here we go:
AD&D
Gamma World
Star Frontiers
Traveller
MegaTraveller
DC Heroes
Marvel Super Heroes
James Bond
Champions
Villains & Vigilantes (simple but fun superhero game)
Robotech
Twilight 2000 (only a little bit)
Pendragon – Arthurian RPG (duh) that I enjoyed quite a bit.
GURPS Superheroes
Toon
I also played some BattleTech and Car Wars.
Yeah, I wonder if anyone here has ever played Rifts.
I started in the late 70s. (A)D&D in numerous versions, Runequest, Traveller (original and 2300AD), Fantasy Hero, Hero system, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, Rolemaster / MERP, Toon (once), and more that I don’t recall. I’ve not gamed in well over a year, but am active on Enworld’s messageboard.
Ooooh, a chance to show off my geek roots…
D&D/AD&D plus future incarnations
Gamma World
Top Secret
Twilight 2000
Warhammer
Ars Magica
MERPS
Call of Cthulhu
Palladium
Shadowrun
the Gygax game after he left TSR (I can picture the cover but for the life of me can’t come up with the title - perhaps because it was wholly forgettable)
plus a couple of homemade pick-a-part systems
Started with D&D in high school. Quit after being called a geek one too many times.
Then I embraced my inner RPGer in college.
Played primarily Marvel Universe and AD&D. Marvel on Fridays, AD&D on Saturdays.
Also played:
Car Wars
Rus
Warhammer
Shadowrun
And another one that for the life of me I cannot remember the name - I remember zombies, killer psycho clowns, carnivals, ghosts…
It was kinda neat - in our group of (usually) 8-10 players, I was the only girl. A few tried, but didn’t like it. At first the guys tried to play nice. Awww, let the little girl fight a slug or whatever. But in like Marvel I always picked the not so nice characters (Domino, Scarlet Witch &c). I really enjoyed letting out my inner bitch!
I listed Rifts as one of the games I’ve played.
Some more I forgot to include.
Ghostbusters
Vampire
Werewolf
Gammaworld
Mech Warrior
Star Frontiers
Star Wars (d6 and d20)
Star Trek (FASA and LUG)
Stargate SG-1
Spycraft
Marc
I’ve played:
D&D / AD&D v.1, v.2
Toon (never as a campaign)
Car Wars (always arena combat, never as a campaign)
Paranoia (Happiness is mandatory. Playing Paranoia makes you happy.)
Teeners (attempted to GM a session once)
Twilight: 2000 (character creation took longer than the adventure!)
Werewolf: The Apocalypse
GULG (playtesting a GURPS homegrown variant)
Taps (playtesting a homegrown system)
Star Wars (1 session)
Shadowrun (1 session)
A while back I came across references to JParanoia, enabling people to run a Paranoia game over the Internet with a Java client. Might anybody be interested?
Oh, heck. Just put me down for most every one multiply mentioned already, 'K?
It really depends upon what you’re looking for from the experience. The 1st edition was very good at emulating some aspects of the RPG in a chanbara-ish system. The mechanics imposed their feel on the game in a very real way; if you weren’t looking for L5R, it was kind of sub-optimal.
2nd edition… had problems. 3rd edition is very pretty to look at, but has been revised in so many places that it’s very different from 1st edition – power creep and greater character surivability, for example.
Oriental Adventures + Rokugan… well, if you wanted to play D&D with an L5R veneer, it was okay. Although the mechanics of the classes were rather sub-optimal (which, for D&D, can be a big problem).
The character generator program for 5th edition HERO is the bees’ knees, though. Made my job as GM (when playing that) much easier. I’ve a friend who wants to GM GURPS, and he’s found no such resource.
So I’d put GURPS as worse than HERO. And we may be soon playing HERO, instead of GURPS, methinks…
Let’s see:
AD&D (boo hiss)
**Ars Magica
**Earthdawn
**Legend of the 5 Rings
**Fading Suns
Exalted
Dogs in the Vineyard
Paranoia
GURPS
FUDGE
**personal favorites/long-running campaigns
D&D (every edition)
Space Opera
Traveller (in the original three-book boxed set)
Twilight 2000
Top Secret
Merc 2000
Traveller 2300
Shadowrun
Cyberpunk
Gamma World
Paranoia
Star Trek (FASA)
BattleTech/BattleMech
Ars Magica
GURPS (I forget which edition)
Star Wars (D6 & D20)
7th Sea
Blue Planet