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The Most Realistic Role-playing Game

My real-life players have a constant gripe with Dungeons & Dragons, and that is that the game is quite unrealistic. From the abstract nature of hit points to basic conceits and conventions to make combat flow, to the basic nature of a class-based gaming system, they enjoy debating and grumbling things don't always make sense. So this leaves me curious: what is the most realistic role-playing game out there?

My most realistic game, with options to make it less so for survivability or fun, is Steve jackson's GURPS game system. The Generic Universal Role-Playing System uses a point-buy system to enforce balance in the game and put a value on EVERYTHING that could define a character. Possessing a skill, appearance, super power, wealth, contacts, high stats, all has a point cost. The Game Master decides what kind of game he wants to run, plugs int he resources for the game (Sourcebooks, mostly, and some of the best-indexed sourcebooks I've ever used). You can do literally anything in it - Russian Superhero Illuminati? Easy. World War One with magic and psychics? Why not? The unifying rules, however, keep the action as realistic as you want them to be. That wizard who cast a fireball? A great shot from even a .22 can take him out if he's not protected. That's my offering; I'm interested to know what other gamers would consider the most realistic game themselves.

Game Role-playing Realistic The

A few days ago I did a brief review of The Burning Wheel Gold which is a game that I think tends to have fair amount of realism, both in terms of its mechanics and the way it handles character creation, skills, etc. Unlike Gurps though Burning Wheel is pretty much limited to the fantasy genre. As far as combat and social conflict though, Burning Wheel is probably among one of the most realistic systems I've come across so far (Though I admit my exposure is somewhat limited).

One issue I had with GURPS was the ability one had to really min/max a character by taking on a bunch of flaws in order to gain a series of advantages (Of course I'm operating on the GURPS system that I knew back in the 90's) and to be fair I haven't played GURPS in a very long time and am nowhere near an expert on the system.

The Ubiquity system (Specifically a game called Desolation which uses the Ubiquity system) also has some elements of "Realism." I really like the way Desolation handles magic in that it is generally "Free form" There are no spells that a wizard must memorize and using magic can be very taxing on the spell caster I agree with your friends regarding systems like Dungeons & Dragons that utilize the concepts of class, hit points, etc. I was also not much of a fan of the way Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons 3.0/3.5 used feats and such to create characters that were essentially super human and nearly invincible at higher levels. Dungeons & Dragons5E does continue this trend to some extent but I feel like it has reduced some of the overpowered features that earlier editions had; Playing 5E is reminiscent of ADungeons & Dragons2E, which is the system I started with.

I suppose Savage Worlds can be modified to be a little more realistic by using certain options like the gritty damage rule and minimizing the use of bennnies. SW using these options is my go-to system for my zombie apocalypse/walking dead style games, and the system is fairly flexible which is a good thing in my mind.

Edited: Aericsteele on 29th Oct, 2015 - 3:44am

The Most Realistic Role-playing Game Reviews RPG & Card Board

World of Medieval is probably as realistic as it gets, just ask all the players that had characters die off like flies from trying to be a super hero.