The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: FREAKINAWESOMEHORSEWoD Core is effectively classless.

QuoteVreeg's guildschool uses it, as will my setting when I finish it. As for published system's I believe GURPS is class free.

Quote from: Magnus Pym

Quote from: http://crackmonkey.org/~nick/loyhargil/fate3/fate3.htmlSpirit of the Century[/url] is a lighthearted 1920's pulp action/adventure game using FATE; the SRD is free online.
- The Dresden Files RPG is based on the book series of the same name, and deals with modern, urban fantasy (wizards and vampires running around the city, etc.) Compared to Spirit of the Century, it's darker, more structured (still classless, but with a lot of templates and things for certain types of characters), and considerably more complex. Also, the rules are not free on the internet.
- Jade FATE is my own project, a heavily-houseruled version of the Spirit of the Century system, where I tweak a few things and generally port the system away from 1920's pulp action and towards my own homebrewed fantasy setting.
- A more generic, system-free "Basic FATE" product is still in production, and should be flexible enough to do just about anything.

So, here are some things I like about FATE:

It's totally classless. There's a pool of about 25-30 skills; you pick which ones you're better at. Then you pick a handful of "stunts", which are special capabilities that bend the usual rules in some way or another. So, a character might be Great (+4) at Academics, Good (+3) at Resolve and Empathy, Fair (+2) at Endurance and Deceit, etc. And might have special stunts that make him/her a master of disguise, an excellent trick shot with a gun (or whatever), able to come back to play after dying "off camera" (you know the rule: no body, no death, right?), etc.

All conflicts are handled the same way. There's really just one set of rules for running an extended conflict between characters, and you use that whether you're running a fistfight, a shouting match, an intense negotiation, or a sorcerer's duel. The only differences are the types of skills involved (are you attacking with Fists and Weapons or with Intimidation and Deceit?) and the types of consequences experienced by the characters who lose. It's very slick.

ASPECTS! One of my favorite game mechanics in any system, anywhere. Every character has a handful of aspects, which are descriptive phrases with a game mechanics impact. (For instance, a character might be a Good-Hearted Person, might be a Scoundrel, might have an Unrequited Love, might rely on My Trusty Toolkit, might be likely to Take A Chance, etc. You make these up.) These are double-edged swords. They can help you in certain situations with concrete bonuses, hinder you in other situations with penalties, and encourage your character to act in certain ways because of the way their effects are tied into the main game currency (fate points). You get a fate point when one of your aspects makes things inconvenient for you, incentivizing players to choose some problematic aspects, which make the game more interesting.

Character creation: This is a very awesome part of FATE. Varies a little from game to game. In Spirit of the Century, you actually have a sheet of paper you pass around the circle to your neighbor to write collaborative backstories on like a goddamned party-game icebreaker. In ~*my old town*~ before I moved away, sometimes my gaming group (who usually did D&D and stuff) would just do SotC character creation with little or no intention to actually play the game, because SotC character creation is just that much fun.

There's more stuff but I just dropped a package of paragraphs on this thread and I need to get some kind of breakfast in me anyway, so

Quote from: Magnus Pym

Quote from: http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?70258.0Steel Isle [/url] game, every thursday night.  Just had session 64, and LC, Llum, Nomadic, SD, Weave, and our resident Liguist all can claim a good amount of familiarity with the system.  

"While any ruleset can be optimized, Guildschool has more options for customization after the thrill of building cookie cutter combat monsters is over.  It is best with multidimensional games, when intrigue and interaction are on equal footing as exploration and magic."   From here.