Pendragon RPG

Greg Stafford's Pendragon, fifth edition, is an excellent role playing game of not only shaping how your character and lands develop and change but it can also force you down certain paths.

It does this though your traits and passions. Traits are two sides of a coin and vary from one to twenty with both sides adding up to twenty.These traits are described as virtues and vices such as generous and selfish, prudent and reckless, and valorous and cowardly. Passions can be such things such as loyalty (to different people or persons), love (same), and hospitality. As a player chooses to do, or refuse to do something they can unless they have a corresponding trait or passion that is sixteen or higher. Then they must abide by it unless they roll a d20 higher than that trait or passion. In other words they succeed with the trait or passion if they roll equal to (a critical) or lower.

For example, if a horde of Saxons come over the hill to avenge their brethren that were just slain by your group and you had a hatred (Saxons) of sixteen or higher, you might fail the roll and have to stay.

Another example is if you were asked by your lord to tell what happened with the Saxons in the previous example. If your modest was sixteen or higher and you failed your roll, even if you wanted to brag or not you would speak of how you could not have been victorious without your fellow knights.

This system is not hindering as it might seem. You play a person with feelings and desires. Goals and a back history. These traits and passions can change if you put the effort into it. If you roll exactly the number of the trait or passion, or constantly do things that would make a change in personality (always heading off into battle with little thought, for example, being more reckless than prudent), you would make a check beside that trait or passion. At years end, you would roll a d20 for each checked trait or passion to see if it increased. This is achieved by rolling equal to or more than that value.

Skills are checked against the same way. This means that the more a player uses their traits, passions and skills the better they can get.

Combat is a nicely elegant system and takes little time. Each player uses the weapon skill for the weapon being used. If they are against multiple enemies they can spit it as they see fit. These scores are altered by various modifiers to get the final score they must meet (critical) or get under. The enemy rolls at the same time as the player. The higher number that is is successful that considered a success but the lower number can use their shield to reduce the damage dealt. Criticals cancel each other out and one side that gets a critical does double damage. If enough damage is dealt it may have a change to drop their opponent to the ground with the blow (which will give all the downed person's enemies a bonus in targeting them in combat and a minus for the downed person).

The long term planning for a player's manors is also fun. What to build, the year's crop success and random events make for tense winter seasons. You also have marriage and heirs to take care of as well as marrying off your sisters and daughters.

Another excellent feature of the game is each game session can take place in an evening of three  to four hours.

I'm having a blast and its simple to learn and play. The wiki article is good for more details and the game is sold from the website at the beginning of the article and here.