GAMING SYSTEMS

Dungeons & Dragons (commonly abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. It was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. D&D grew in popularity through the late 1970s and 1980s. The release of the 5th Edition, coinciding with D&D’s 40th anniversary, occurred in the second half of 2014. D&D uses polyhedral dice to resolve in-game events. These are abbreviated by a ‘d’ followed by the number of sides. Shown counter-clockwise from the bottom are: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20 dice. A pair of d10 can be used together to represent percentile dice, or d100.

The World of Darkness is a modern fantasy horror brand, originally created and developed by White Wolf and its licensing partners, and now owned by Paradox Interactive. While it is typically not a full-fledged game in its own right, it is the shared “Gothic-Punk” setting for tabletop roleplaying games using the Storyteller System; as well as other mediums, including live-action roleplaying, card and board games, and video games.
These were the three heavy-hitters of Classic World of Darkness:
Vampire: The Masquerade: A game of personal horror, wherein players play vampires.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse: A game of savage horror, wherein players take on the role of werewolves.
Mage: The Ascension: A game of reality on the brink, wherein players take on the role of modern mages.
The d10 is the only die type used in the Storyteller System and the Storytelling System, the proprietary in-house system of White Wolf.

Fate is a free RPG system that focuses on telling stories and balancing characters based on story significance, rather than points and cool powers. It’s the system of choice for GMs who are looking for rules that get out of the way of the story, but still provide enough structure to get the job done.
The Fate system as the engine to run RPGs in the universe of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. This is a world that is much like the Earth today, except werewolves, demons, vampires, zombies, faeries, sprites, and magic actually exist along with all the modern-day conveniences to which we have become accustomed. Wizards, and other entities that contain magic powers or properties usually wreak havoc on modern electronics and other man-made items. The world’s population is split roughly into two portions, the ones that are “in the know” and the ones that are not. “In the know” individuals know that magic exists and is all around them, while those not in the know either have no clue, or are harboring such a deep denial that they may as well not know.
Fate maps out difficulty on a verbal scale ranging from “-2 Terrible” to “+8 Legendary”, and handles rolls with six-sided dice labelled “[+][+][ ][ ][-][-]”. Fate gives each character a long list of skills and defaults all of them to “0 Mediocre” apart from any skills the character is supposed to be good at. These can be used among four general actions – attacking, defending, overcoming obstacles or creating an advantage.

Shadowrun is a science fantasy tabletop role-playing game set in a near-future fictional universe in which cybernetics, magic and fantasy creatures co-exist. It combines genres of cyberpunk, urban fantasy and crime, with occasional elements of conspiracy, horror and detective fiction.
From its inception in 1989, Shadowrun has remained among the most popular role-playing games. It has spawned a vast franchise that includes a series of novels, a collectible card game, two miniature-based tabletop wargames, and multiple video games.
Shadowrun takes place several decades in the future 2050 in the first edition, currently 2084.
The Shadowrun game mechanics are based entirely on a 6-sided dice system.

The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game, released by Decipher Inc. in 2002, is a role-playing game set in the Middle-earth of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fiction. The game is set in the years between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, but may be run at any time from the First to Fourth Age and contains many examples of how to do so. Sourcebooks cover the events of The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson’s film trilogy adaptation.
It is a simplified, level-less system that makes use of two six-sided dice for all rolls. There are 9 character types available, each a combination of what other systems would split into “Race” and “Class” (such as “Hobbit Scout” or “Human Ranger”). Each of these is then defined by 12 Stats, including both what other systems would call “Attributes” (defining a character’s mental and physical characteristics) and “Skills” (defining a character’s training and talent for various tasks like melee combat or magic).

In this transhumanist neo-noir vision of the future, the human mind is nothing more than digital codeDigital Human Freight saved and stored in a Cortical Stack, advanced technology that allows you to “re-sleeve” your entire consciousness into a new body.
In the Official Altered Carbon Role Playing Game, wear any body you can afford, transmit your mind across the cosmos in an instant, and, if you’ve got the credits and political cachet, you can re-sleeve time and again for centuries, accumulating enough wealth and power over the millennia to become the societal equivalent of an immortal god.
Eclipse Phase uses two ten-sided dice (each noted as a d10) for random rolls. In most cases, the rules will call for a percentile roll, noted as d100, meaning that you roll two ten-sided dice, choosing one to count first, and then read them as a result between 0 and 99 (with a roll of 00 counting as zero, not 100). The first die counts as the tens digit, and the second die counts as the ones digit.