Ok if its got to be Fantasy what Fantasy do I like.

I've talked about this before. I dont really like High Fantasy. I love Sci-fi. However I find that its often very hard to run a sci-fi game. What you get at the game table is not what you read in sci-fi lit. I think thats because so much of sci-fi lit is about exploration and that does not translate well to the game table. At least I'm yet to find a way to make it work well.

So in that case what games that are like Fantasy but not fantasy have my mind share:

I like Ars Magica and Pendragon  "alr-history" type rpgs. I'm interesteg in seeing Yggdrasil for this reason. Solid "history" with a mythic bent.

Grimm is a fairytale rpg where you play kids from our world falling into fairy. Playing kids is fun but I'd like an option to play natives of the fairy land too. A proper game with that flavor I think is fun, fun, fun. Maybe The Zorceror of Zo could be like that too?


Similarly I like Qin: The Warring States The Quasi historical Wu Xia inspired setting of Qin is very inspiring. I've always like Chinese cinema and so called "Kung-fu" films. This is a roll playing version of that. Whats not to like. Qin's focus is on the politics of the day and the creation of the Chines superstate.
Legends of Wulin has just come out. It is very similar to Qin. LoW focus is specifically on the  Jianghu River-lake world of secret societies and bandits. That just screams good role playing material.
Both these games toss in ghosts and other supernatural elements as well. 


Legends of the Five Rings fourth edition. The new books are beautiful, really very attractive. Its actually more a Fantasy game then any mentioned so far. However the strong grounding in Bushido and quasi-samurai culture mare it a solid option in this field of faux-history games.   

Then there are the Witch hunting games of Colonial Gothic, Solomon Kane and the eponymous Witch Hunter. I love the idea of playing a game like Last of the Mohicans with sorcery and the supernatural. That just reeks of cool to me.  

All For One - Regime Diabolique is swashbuckling in an Alt-France of the musketeers. I like Seven seas and this is much better done. has the flavour of En Guard and Flashing blades too. I loved the original stories growing up and the scarlet pimpernel which is a nice segue into  



Castle Falkenstein. Victorian pre world war high society with magic and adventure. Its just fun. The core system didnt seem to work that well but now with my experience of narrative games may work better. There seems to be a nice synergy between this and Grimm some how.


Sure there are others  but I read these ones and collect stuff on them and in some way they have all captured my imagination.