Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;620263Hmm you're the first one to say D&D 3E so I'm curious about this one. How does it get your juices flowing?

I think it is the rich, mature style it is written with. I like a lot of 3/3.5E fluff, and I bought many books for the pleasure of reading them. Draconomicon, for example, is a small masterpiece. The Malconvoker idea alone (a "undercover agent" among demons and devils) gave to me the basis for a whole part of my campaign; and so on.

I'm always miffed when a review doesn't touch the quality of the fluff, agonizing instead on system and number crunching. The ability of an RPG to open your mind to new "vistas" even in old landscapes (like D&D's one) is too often undervalued.

Quote from: Reckall;620317I'm always miffed when a review doesn't touch the quality of the fluff, agonizing instead on system and number crunching. The ability of an RPG to open your mind to new "vistas" even in old landscapes (like D&D's one) is too often undervalued.

Speaking to this, I can get "wonder" out of almost any game, but it's additional (and often obscure) material like _Manual of the Planes_ or _Ghostwalker_ that help me get into a space where I can bring it.

Vampire 1e, where you could imagine the WoD to come with all its promise of Ghosts and Faeries and Lupines and other terms which were later altered for print.  Before WW's supplement engine spoiled it.

I can think of two game systems that really brought out a "Sense of Wonder" for me by themselves.

The first was Traveller with all of its design sequences that worked together. I could use the rules to build a universe to my own liking. There was a game that I could use to emulate all of my favorite science fiction that I had read.

The second was D&D 3.x/Pathfinder, not solely because of the rules themselves, but because of what the OGL inspired others to do. From that d20 OGL Core came a wealth of new ideas and possibilities similar to what I had found with Traveller decades earlier. A veritable pre-Cambrian Explosion of new twists on old ideas. Yes, some were utter crap, but the awesome mixed in there was absolutely awesome.

Things just about forgotten, like Small Gods written about in FFG's books, where a relatively weak divinity could grant spells to Clerics based on how many worshippers it had - a whole campaign or three could be created from that alone. Things which became mainstream like the Iron Kingdoms with its steam powered fantasy mecha, now about to become its own non-d20 RPG.

WEG d6 Star Wars was great, but the "Sense of Wonder" that it brought about was the "Sense of Wonder" of the Star Wars universe  themselves and expanded on them in ways that nobody at the time could predict. Both for better and for worse, but it did not create it on its own.

Planescape.

Since my first experience was Planescape Torment, I knew everything was possible when a skull joined my party

Ok, my three sense of wonder games have already been named:

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;619492Some games that invoke that feeling for me are Dragon Warriors, for its connection with folklore,

Quote from: K Peterson;619523I think that Dream Pod 9's Tribe 8 RPG really held a sense of wonder and alienness,

Quote from: elfandghost;619453I'd say Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay too, but only the 1st Edition with its quirks, folklore, weird creatures (Zoats, Fimir, Daemons of Law!), (...) Warhammer 1st Edition wasn't just grim and gritty - it was weird too, magical.

But my biggest sense of wonder moment with regards to RPGs was when I found two issues of the French magazine Casus Belli at a game store in Hanover, Germany.
Suddenly, a whole new world opened up before me, in reviews, ads, news bits, and adventure modules. Nearly every page was a promise of a fully realized game or setting with its own range of sourcebooks and modules.

We foreigners are kind of blessed in that we usually have access to far more games than native English speakers. We have all those imports from the US and UK, plus our own country's output.
I already knew most English and German games - but discovering the whole French market (which felt both bigger and more diverse than the German one) on top of that blew my mind.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;621004but discovering the whole French market (which felt both bigger and more diverse than the German one) on top of that blew my mind.

Same here. The first time I visited the Starplayer shop in Paris (rue Lagrange 16 for those interested) I wondered if it was the Louvre :jaw-dropping:

The French market is something by itself. It cannot be described. I mean, their edition of Call of Cthulhu alone is a whole grade of magnitude above and beyond the original one by Chaosium.

Quote from: Reckall;621244Same here. The first time I visited the Starplayer shop in Paris (rue Lagrange 16 for those interested) I wondered if it was the Louvre :jaw-dropping:

The French market is something by itself. It cannot be described. I mean, their edition of Call of Cthulhu alone is a whole grade of magnitude above and beyond the original one by Chaosium.

I'm learning French this year. No kidding.

I think it could be said with no doubt that when it was first released, Amber filled me with a sense of wonder. It changed everything about how I looked at RPGs, and GMing.

RPGPundit

Tribe 8  would be the game that game me a sense of wonder more than most.

That game has some amazing fluff background material.