I was always a fan of GURPS for this reason; well, that and I think the distribution of a 3D6 roll is pretty great. You're given a pretty simple core, without

I was always a fan of GURPS for this reason; well, that and I think the distribution of a 3D6 roll is pretty great. You're given a pretty simple core, without much of any fluff (so lite you can get it free [1]) and then you're free to add any number of source books to your library to add more depth, or change the game more toward the direction of your liking. You can even play in fully licensed environments with fully licensed sourcebooks (like Vampire [2], etc). I wouldn't say it's the perfect pen and paper RPG, and choosing the 'best' one is probably even more subjective and flame-war-inspiring than picking the 'best' programming language, but it fits my philosophy of gaming pretty well. I would say, though, that an RPG has a pretty direct goal to me, which is having fun. I throw out what I want if I don't have fun with it. I think the mistake is blaming the creators and saying it's stupid, which would just be kind of silly. It just doesn't fit my paradigm. That said, I've played god-knows how many pen and paper RPG's and I have a really good understanding of which paradigms I do and don't like. I think that's how I generally approach programming languages as well, though I'm not as adept with programming as I am rolling a six sided die. [1] http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/ http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/ [2] http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/vampirethemasquerade/ http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/vampirethemasquerade/ (p.s. c.y.a. this is seriously not serious but kind of serious so ymmv)