For me, leaving RM/SM was to look for something lighter. At first that was trying to use MERP and Cyberspace as general replacements, but I eventually went on to even lighter games. I had hoped HARP would be as light as MERP, but it’s not really. Still, though, it’s still sort of “RM lite”. And I expect SHARP (sci-fi harp) is like SM-lite.

Have you looked into those?

or any of the plethora of WEG d6 based games (and mini-d6 and tiny-d6)?

Are you looking for light, or concise (the turn-off from pathfinder’s number of books could be either)? Generic, or genre-specific?

Lately I’ve been buying up the Free League games, which are about to include a fantasy version (KS just ended). Mutant Year Zero, Mutant Year Zero: Genlab Alpha, Coriolis, and Tales from The Loop.

I’ve also been looking at the PIP System (generic dice pool game, where the target number is always 4), and Tiny-d6 (TinyFrontiers, TinyDungeons; also a dice pool game with a fixed target number, and has multiple genres, but each book is specific to the genre).

Last: I think D&D 5e is a really really good base system. There’s some sci-fi counterparts coming out, so there’s that :-}

Or if you want to go REALLY old school, there’s Swords&Wizardry and WhiteStar (S&W applied to space opera). Basically … basic D&D (elf is a class) revived. I’m not as much of a fan of “elf is a class”, but I do love looking back at the light-weight and “think out the specifics yourself instead of having a rule for every little thing” nature of basic D&D.

Fifteen years ago I moved house and in that move I lost my Spacemaster books. We were playing RM set in the Forgotten Realms so they were not being used. When I started to get a hankering for some sci-fi I realised the books were gone so I bought HARP and HARP SF to fill that gap as a Christmas present to myself (because I deserve more presents!).

Incidientally, I had grown disenchanted with the crunchiness of RM when played RAW many years previously and I had removed proably about 90% of the crunch by evaluating the things that were getting in the way of the role playing and house ruling to swap in and out different mechanics. My version of Rolemaster san spells and monsters comes in at no more than 60 pages including character creation, skills and combat.

Even as RAW Rolemaster is a lot lighter than many systems past and present.

This is always the system changers dilemma, my house ruled system fits me like a glove because it was tailored to exactly my needs.

One doesn’t want to eat exactly the same choclolate cake every day though, just because you once said choclolate cake was your favourite. Right now I want to try something different.

As I said in the post, I don’t actually know what I want. I do know what I don’t like.

Things I don’t like are games based around hit points and combat being about eroding hit points. My experience of that has been that a character with a sword cannot beat the greater challenges of the game. You need powerful magic items or magic. Grinding away with a sword doing 1d8 against a dragon with 400hp is neither fun or viable.

I like detailed skill systems when I could play two different fighters and one is obviously a centurion and the other clearly a celtic warrior. I like being able to shape the character and change the focus.

I don’t like classes or professions. I tend to see these as limiting a players choices not giving them options. I think as a teenager looking at all the Conan novels in the bookshop and seeing Conan the ‘this’ and Conan the ‘that’ made me want the unlimited adventure that only RPGs can provide.

My favourite three systems over my RPG life have been Traveller, Champions and Rolemaster.

If there were a spectrum of game systems with Simulations that valued realism over all else at one end and at the other were completely narrative systems then I would definitely be on the simulationist side of centre. Too far down the simulationist road and the fun gets lost for me.

I have played in games where once you had your turn in the combat round people considered going and putting the kettle on or taking a cigarette break because they would be back in plenty of time before the combat round was over. That is not for me.

You list a lot of systems. Some I have looked at and WhiteStar is not for me. I started out playing with the blue covered Basic D&D and we moved on because of the limitations. Going back fills a nostalgic 5 minutes but I do not think I would enjoy an entire campaign.

Regarding generic verses genre specific, I kind of want both. I like the idea of a core system that is fun to play but I also want a be swept off my feet by the setting. That is the appeal of Ecplise Phase and 7th Sea. The settings are really engagine. What I am trying to do with my Devil’s Staircase project is build a really flexible and engaging rule set that can be applied to any genre.

I will work through your suggestions, they are much appreciated and see if one or more is what I am looking for.

For the Fria Ligan/Free League games (Mutant Year Zero, Mutant Year Zero: Genlab Alpha, Coriolis, and Tales from The Loop), someone had a good basic summary of the core system on a thread at En World. Before I paste that in:

1) Mutant Year Zero (MYZ) is a Gamma World like Post Apocalypse game.
2) MYZ: Genlab Alpha is an expansion for MYZ that focuses on uplifted animals at a particular lab, but you can expand from there. There’s also an upcoming expansion that focuses on robots/androids: MYZ Mechatron. Both expansions are stand-alone (can be played without the core MYZ).
3) Coriolis is a dark space opera sort of game.
4) Tales from the Loop is … I’ve seen it compared to “Stranger Things” adapted to an RPG. Kids near a particle accelerator lab near Las Vegas, contemporary-ish in time setting.
5) The upcoming “Forbidden Lands” is their retro-fantasy RPG. Unlike the other “Zero Year Engine” games, it will not only use d6’s but also “D8s, D10s and D12s as well, for powerful artifacts and magic items.”

Free Quickstart rules for several of their games can be had on DTRPG.

(copy and paste)

Both Mutant: Year Zero, Coriolis, and Tales from the Loop use a more-or-less common system for task resolution, where you roll a number of d6 equal to a stat + a skill (both maxing at 5 for humans). Each 6 is a success. All three systems have the option to re-roll non-successes at a cost, though what that cost is varies from game to game: in MYZ it’s the risk of hurting yourself and/or your gear, in Coriolis it’s giving the GM a Darkness point they can later use to insert all sorts of badness into the game, and in Tales it’s either a luck point or taking a Condition (essentially a persistent -1 die to all rolls until you get an opportunity to remove it).

All three games use the same four basic stats (not sure about the English translations, but they are essentially Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Empathy (combining aspects of Wisdom and Charisma)), and a fairly short skill list (MYZ has 12 common skills plus one for each class, and Coriolis has 16 skills). You also have Talents, either giving you new abilities or letting you use old ones in new ways. Beyond that, the games vary quite a bit from one another.

[combat]

It might vary a bit between games, but here’s how it works in MYZ:

1. Initiative = d6+Dex. Can’t remember if we rerolled each round or not, but I don’t think we did.
2. Attack roll is a skill check, usually either Strength + Fight or Dexterity + Shoot. Most weapons give 1-3 dice as a bonus.
3. Opponent can defend as an action, rolling a similar check which removes successes from the attacker.
4. On a success, deal the weapon’s base damage. Additional successes can either increase damage or do extra stuff (knock prone, deal damage as stress instead, etc.). If the opponent is wearing armor, they roll dice equal to the armor’s rating and reduces damage by that much.

Now here’s an area where I know the systems differ. In MYZ, all trauma directly affects one of your stats: damage reduces Strength, stress reduces Dexterity, confusion reduces Intelligence, and doubt reduces Empathy. This causes a death spiral, since taking damage means your Strength gets reduced which then means you’ll be worse at fighting. Coriolis, OTOH, has hit points separate from stats. Not sure about Tales – I don’t think you’re supposed to fight per se in that game, but there are a number of Conditions that can reflect damage.

Here’s the conversation over at En World:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?4492-Exploring-Forbidden-Lands-%96-A-Preview-of-The-Free-League%92s-New-Fantasy-RPG#.WfeZqZOnHAw

Not sure if that’s exactly going to fit your tastes or not, but there it is :-}