Pathfinder 2e is a very good DnD-styled alternative that in my opinion solves quite a few issues that 5e currently has, namely the fact that martial classes get eclipsed by spellcasters, the overwhelming presence by dexterity as the best ability score there is and so on. Also, Paizo is not WotC! So you get to feel a bit better about supporting them.

Been really getting into BitD style games
Love it as a gm as there is little need for prep. I can spend time brainstorming ideas but there's no problem if I don't get the time.

It mostly runs on the imaginations of the players. It feels much more like we are cocreating a story rathe then me having to come up with everything. I love to see what kinds of crazy ideas people come up with.

I wrote a non-D&D TTRPG a while back, which I still run quite often: Whittledice and Parchment.

Whittledice & Parchment is a tiny, embeddable TTRPG – a game for your TTRPG characters to play, inside your existing game. Perfect for those times when someone doesn’t show up or your party just needs some downtime. If your current GM is interested in GMing two games at once, great – otherwise, pick someone else in the group.

Whittledice is print-and-play - just print out the rules, cut out the Character Cards, and get going.

I'm still working on it, but it's simple and definitely playable!

I've got another one that doesn't really fit with the others I posted, so I made a whole separate comment.

The Quiet Year is a map building roleplaying game. It has no combat; it is entirely collaborative storytelling. You play not as an individual character, but collectively as the spirit of the community. It takes a few hours to play a game, and it's relatively quiet and fun. We actually played it as a precursor to our current DnD campaign; we played the Quiet Year, and the resulting community that was made was the location for the first phase of our campaign, complete with issues that we had introduced, features we had sketched, projects we had seen started.

Ironsworn and Starforged are both great GM-less RPGs. Can be played solo or in co-op (or with GM if you still insist ;).

I've been running some games based on Chronicles of Darkness and am quite fond of the narrative system.

I am currently involved with 3 TTRPG games with 3 groups. One is straight DnD5. The second is Shadow of the Demon Lord, which is overall very similar to DnD mechanically.

The third is a hybrid mashup, and it's my favorite. It is using Blades in the Dark as the mechanical base, with the lore from a Microscope universe grafted over top of it.

Our group of 5 (later 6) spent about 6 months playing Microscope asynchronously using a Google doc (after an initial real-time session for our GM to introduce the system to us). We spent the time just building an interesting world, creating historical figures, historical events, etc.

At some point we decided there was enough there, and we picked a point in the timeline to have an adventure. We then used the Blades system to design characters and decide what kind of adventure to set out on.

The Blades system is far less crunchy than DnD and others. Instead of spending most of our sessions rolling dice to decide the minutia of combat, we spend the majority of our time discussing the sociopolitical ramifications of the really crazy decisions our characters are making. We have the freedom to retcon/alter/create anything about the universe we want, because we created the entire thing and made up the rules as we went. It is also the game I feel the most invested in, because I helped create it.

I love Vampire The Masquerade, It's very different than D&D and focuses much more on the collaborative storytelling aspect. The DM is called a Storyteller and most of the drama comes from dialogue skill checks kind of like Disco Elysium - you'll spent most of your time trying to manipulate people to do your bidding. The game is very flexible depending what story you want to play, so there's loads of potential stories to tell as it has such a heavy emphasis on characters and setting over combat.

The lore is very fleshed out and all the vampire clans are different so there's load of stories to be told about the clans alone. There's two main factions Camarilla the vampire government, and the Anarchs the anarchists at the name implies. And both factions have a lot of backstory and lore so the game will play very differently depending on which side your players decide to join.

There is combat in the game but it's really meant to be used to enhance scenes rather than be the main focus. A lot of veterans complain about V5 not being as good as the older version but I've had plenty of fun with it. It's hard to find people and took me about 2 months to put a group together but I have never had as much fun as a DM before, well worth it if you can get a group together.

If anyone is interested in the TTRPG but aren't sure where to being there's a few of video games - the most similar to the tabletop game is probably Swangsong, where you level up different social stats and choose your own adventure. There's a couple of visual novels, Coteries of New York & Shadows Of New York which are good for the getting a feel for the setting - abeit short. And finally there's Bloodlines, probably the best video game adaptation but it has awful combat and needs some tweaking to get running.

I run a Fate Core for a cyberpunk + precursor artifact discovery scenario campaign set in a future (New) San Francisco.

I adore Fate as a system, minimal crunch (but you can easily add in any needed) as it's actually a system really designed for actors/role players/drama nerd types. To sit at my table you have to be able to and be prepared to role play and improv all the time.

Disclosure: currently playing a 5E game, and the last game before that was a 3.5E. Here's an overview of games I've played in the past, but this is wildly out of date, and then a game I want to play on the future but I have literally zero experience with. So basically what I'm saying is that my list has no intrinsic value, but I enjoyed the question a lot.

Also at least one of these leans heavily into Wizards of the Coast, and I would also generally maintain that Wizards itself is actually not that bad, but Hasbro is pure fucking evil, which is a minor distinction, but an important one. It's the same stance that I used to justify playing WoW for a long time, and it's probably actually not that true; eventually the big wigs from the parent company infiltrates the top of the subsidiary company and turns it to shit too.

Played

7th Sea

A swashbuckling adventure game focused on, well, the seven seas. Pirates, buccaneers, privateers, sailors all kind of take the forefront. It's set in really-its-not-Europe-guys-no-really and you can be a variety of European nationalities factions. There's a bit of magic, a lot of swashbuckling, and a pretty fast and loose combat system. It's a bit of an adjustment from D&D and I actually am struggling to remember the core mechanics, other than that it is fast and loose! Theme A+, system B+, from what I recall

Vampire: the Masquerade (Storyteller System)

My inner goth theatre kid loved this, and I still love it. I would definitely play another White Wolf game as well. It is, honestly, teen oriented melodramatic bullshit, but tons of fun. If you wonder what I mean, read this overview of the clans and get a sense of the sort of game you'll be in. One of my favourite descriptions from the wiki:

clan fractured by madness, each member irrevocably suffering under the yoke of insanity.

That one sentence sums up the feel of the game. But if you were an early 20-something who loved Blade, The Matrix, Dark City, Interview With A Vampire, or even Buffy, then this was a way to play out something that felt similar to one of those movies. The Storyteller System is pretty good, and feels like it does focus more on the storytelling than pure combat, though combat was still fun and good.

Pathfinder 2E

I found Pathfinder to be the easiest drop-in replacement for D&D. There are things that I like better - the focus on feats which make characters feel a lot more distinct is probably my favourite. In D&D there are analogues to that, though - for example, my current character is a Warlock and the invocations have a similar feel to feats. Overall, P2E is a great system; easy to get into, fun to play, easy to make a switch to from D&D.

Custom Magic: the Gathering Dungeon Crawler

Okay, so this is probably my favourite. A number of years ago, my brother came up with a very cool and fun D&D / Magic mashup that I think Wizards of the Coast should just buy and release. You create a deck from a set of pre-defined cards, with some custom "class" cards that give you benefits, and then you run through a dungeon, with combat being played as a game of Magic, with the DM effectively being the Archenemy. We've only ever done one-shots, but they have been some of the best gaming sessions I've ever played. Here's his post on reddit about it.

Planning to Play

Numenera

I got a bunch of books from a humble bundle, and I just like the idea of the game. It is set a billion years in the future, and the rise and fall of civilization has happened several times. There is technology that is effectively magic - the Clark quote, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is basically the defining characteristic of the setting. The system itself seems pretty simple and easy to get into, and the character creation seems fun, and is about as far as I've really gotten into figuring out the system (I'm angling to get my D&D group to play this after our current D&D campaign ends... in about 2025). Your character has a sentence that describes what is effectively your "class":

I am [Name], a [Descriptor] [Type] that [Focus].

• Type - a basic class, of which there are three - Glaive (warrior-ish), Jack (thief-ish), Nano (mage-ish)
• Descriptor - an adjective that describes your class. The list is extensive, but are things like "Slick" or "Intelligent" or "Mystical" and these change how your class functions. "Cautious" for example, will increase your stealth and your perception, but decrease your initiative in battle.
• Focus - even more specialization. You might take "Brandishes a Silver Tongue" and improve charisma based things

So your character sheet at the top instead of something like "Jarvis, level 12 Bard" would be "I am Jarvis, a Learned Jack that Brandishes a Silver Tongue". I don't really know how well this works, but it seems like fun in theory.

BATTLETECH

The greatest tabletop spreadsheet simulator ever created. An interstellar warfare simulator largely carried out on planets and moons with centuries old stomp-y robots built on forgotten technology, lore-rich factions, and semi-hard sci-fi physics to tie it all together.

Recent resurgence is entirely due to the success of the HBS PC game which was piggybacked upon to release new books, models, etc. I haven't played the TT game in close to 15 years now because the player base had dwindled to just pockets of old people like me that aren't locally concentrated enough to actually get a regular game together. That is a possibility now as there are games at game stores and LFG now, but I haven't made the time to go and know that if I do so it'll just be another hobby I pick back up, which will inevitably result in spending inordinate amounts of money on boards, terrain, accessories, a resin printer, and the services of a miniature painter. So for now I play MegaMek when the BT itch needs scratching.

The game is fun, it has the right amount of logistical management in full campaigns without actually weighing you down with unnecessary minutia like some games and a casual scenario can be tossed together easily if you aren't in the mood for full campaign which is often weaved into someone else's campaign as you're largely a mercenary that can take jobs as you please. No magic, no aliens, no interdimensional beings, just humans doing human stuff a millennia+ into the future. Factions range from relatively "normal" groups to hyper-fanatical dirty clanners so you can play whatever part you want, but also suits people that just want to be themselves and do their thing while blowing up each other.

Lancer. 11,000 years in the future humanity has finally gotten its shit together and is working to build a galactic utopia. This is hampered by the tyrants and corprostates that want to rule their own little fiefdoms instead of letting people be free. Player characters resolve problems by fighting in giant mechs. Also there are AIs from outside of causality; some of them are friendly but all of them are deeply weird.

Notable for having surprisingly excellent companion software.

Genesys, love the dice pool mechanic. This system interestingly was my first RPG. I almost started with Pathfinder in college but the guy organizing that game dropped out in between semesters so we couldn't start up at the beginning of the next semester like we had planned. A year later, a friend wanted to play Edge of the Empire and since I'm a Star Wars nerd, I was in.

I don't think i saw i mentioned but the Forged in the Dark system is a great narrative first system. It's not numbers heavy, at most you roll 5d6 and take the highest.

I'm playing a bootleg star wars game Scum and Villainy and it's a ton of fun.

I've got to throw out a mention for Mouse Guard, my favorite system. You play a patrol of mice protecting citizens from predators, nature, and other mice. I love the themes of bravery, duty, service, and standing up against greater threats.

Mechanically, it incentivizes you to role play your character traits, both positively and negatively, rather than "win." And the classless skill system bases levels on using the skill: to level up a skill, you need a certain number of successes and failures with it, so you're actually encouraged to stack the deck against yourself sometimes.

I've only played it once, but I really enjoyed "The Sprawl". It's a "powered by the apocalypse" Cyberpunk, heist game. It runs really different from something like Pathfinder/D&D. It's one of those games where the story is a lot more important than actually winning.

The combat is fairly abstract, and it's more about managing risk and resources. My favorite mechanic is that contacts, knowledge and equipment are bankable resources you can save or spend. So when your plan hits a snag, you can spend a contact to be like "I know a guy that can help us fix this, and invent a character that is now part of the world.

Theres this fun thing where equipment and knowledge can be retroactive. Mid mission, things are looking hopless, you can you spend an equipment point, to have always had a piece of gear that you're using now. "Luckily I knew this would happen and I jump off the roof, activating the parachute I've carrying this whole time." It helps sell the idea of an elaborate Oceans 11 style heist.

I've been in a Dungeon World game as a player for a while now and it's been a pretty interesting D&D alternative to try. I'm not sure I like it more than I do D&D – it's a bit too simplified for my tastes and the lack of critical successes/failures take away too many interesting moments to me – but it does have some noteworthy advantages.

I think the biggest of them is the fact that the combat system is much faster-paced. Instead of an initiative system, players just ask the DM when they want to do something. They roll for it, and if they fail badly enough, the DM "makes a move" against them. In practice, this usually means a player tries to attack something, misses, and as a result the monster hits them instead.

On the downside, this means enemies get almost no rolls whatsoever, and so they almost can't fail,¹ and I find the lack of, for example, a monster failing a stat-save to not get knocked off a cliff after being hit to be a shame. On the upside, this feels way faster and lets players act far more often, as well as dramatically simplifying things.

Overall, I feel like this change in particular is on the whole beneficial, as one of my biggest peeves as a D&D player so far has been that I feel like I spend a lot of time waiting to get to do things, and this solves that. Still, I can't shake the feeling I'd be having more fun if more granularity were available.

_{1. What more, if players get lucky, monsters might not get to do anything at all.}

13^th Age (SRD) is fantastic. It's a D&D-esque system that is lighter on rules (especially coming from 4th Edition) and heavier on trusting the GM and players to make smart decisions. The coolest thing in my opinion is the way that they handle skills. Instead of being proficient in "Sleight of Hand" or Picking Locks, a rogue might put background points into "Cat Burglar" and then when asked to roll a skill check the player will ask if Cat Burglar applies or not. This can get interesting with more creative backgrounds. One of my favorites was a player who put several points into "Good Dancer" which he then successfully used for things that required light feet some types of social interactions.

Cyberpunk 2020 is probably my goto. Just something about the system that works well for me.

13th Age, Mythras, and Genesys are all good as well.

I've been a pen&paper gamer for close to 25 years now but never been big on D&D. Dabbled in it, but somehow always bounced off.

My biggest endeavour by time was probably Earthdawn (1st edition, I even still got all my books!) which I GMed for close to 10 years and played multiple times, too. It's a fantastic world for playing a less combat-centric adventure in IMO, and worked really well for me because I am a GM who thinks of characters, situations and moments but not of how they'll fit together and when they show up, I leave that to my players to achieve (or fuck up 😂).

My second big RPG would be Shadowrun. We originally started playing it as a "break" in our EarthDawn sessions. Since we played ED very light on combat, strong on roleplaying (what with the whole legendary points as XP lending itself to that), we used SD as our pure shoot/punch/shoot/hack/shoot game. I tried the 5th edition later, and I don't know. Felt weird. Tried to GM it again, couldn't get myself to be excited by it sadly.

However, nowadays I am excited mostly by FATE, specifically Secrets of Cats but FATE's nature of course leads to an inherently hackable and motifyable nature of any setting you start with. I love it, especially how strongly it focuses on cooperative storytelling as a roleplaying focus over rules and combat. Perfectly my cup of coffee.

So, any non-DnD games looking for an extra player? :)

In addition to 3rd, 3.5, 3.75 (pathfinder) and 5th edition of D&D I've played:

Cinematic Unisystem (can't recollect how that worked)
Das Schwarze Auge (German system, English version is "The Dark Eye", reverse D20 system, lower numbers are better)
Warhammer 40k: Deathwatch (D10 based system)

And some others, of the above I prefer the last one. When it comes to simplicity I'd like to delve deeper into Cogent: https://cogentroleplay.com

Me and my group have had a great time playing a few non D&D TTRPG's.

Call of Cthulhu is one we've gone back to a few times, we've also enjoyed a one shot using Delta Green, Cyberpunk and Vampire the Masquerade.

One that we really had a blast with was Laudunum Drinkers, a very simple TTRPG written as part of a game jam by Luke Gearing. It's like a cross between 1890's Victorian London and Inception where a Victorian Gentleman's Club conduct experiments into colonising dreams.

No love for Savage Worlds yet? Well, I'll be the first to recommend it. It could be the last TTRPG ruleset I ever learn. I love that it is setting agnostic and the core book covers enough ground to run just about any setting. The new Fantasy Companion is an amazing add-on. SW has just the right amount of crunch for me... and I liberally use Quick Encounter rules to keep the game moving along for my players who enjoy exploration, investigation, puzzle solving, and NPC interaction more than straight combat.

I played D&D for many years and watching OSR take off has been cool. I even picked up OSE like everyone else (though I still prefer BFRPG by a long shot). Ultimately, Savage Worlds scratches all the itches for me.

There is going to be a Kickstarter for a 20th Anniversary version soon for anyone interested.

Going to start a Call of Cthulhu group shortly. It's been such a long time since I've played a TTRPG, not that it's stopped me from joining Kickstarters for a variety of games over the last few years - OSR, Mothership, Orbital Blues, Black Hack, Cthulhu 2nd edition reprint. I love them all and want to run them all, but I'm pretty happy that the group went for CoC: the props are amazing (and HP Lovecraft Historical Society has a bunch of super realistic props), and the theme is so different from the fantasy games.

Here's what I've been playing:

Pathfinder 2e: Ran the beginner box for my 5e table over Foundry. We had a blast! I'm looking into Eberron conversions for pf2e and I'm excited for the upcoming remaster.

Blades in the Dark: So easy to run, so intense. The mechanics really click with me. I borrowed downtime and clocks for my 5e game, and sometimes I do engagement rolls. I've also run Scum & Villainy and I intend to run Band of Blades one of these days.

Icon: from the co-creator of Lancer, it just got a big playtest update and is reportedly feature complete. I'm looking forward to trying it!

I must say that Dread is my favourite system for one-shots, particularly for players who don't have the time to dedicate to learning a complex ruleset.

Long story short, it's a ttrpg where instead of rolling dice etc. to see if you succeed, you draw from a jenga tower! If you succeed, you succeed. If you start taking a piece but then think better of it then you fail, but not catastrophically. If you knock over the tower however, you are... removed from the game.

As it's predominantly a horror game, I love going all out with a soundboard and customised ambient noise as we go, it's so much fun to ramp up the tension when someone is trying to perform a real life dex check!

I'm not going to go super deep into all the games people have already mentioned, but a short-list of what we've played with our in-person group so far is:

• D&D (4th, 5th)
  • we actually played 4th after 5th and only briefly
• Pathfinder 2nd edition
  • started playing this right after it launched and still play this! Highly recommend it if you like D&D, and I'm actually a developer of a third party app that helps you run games as a GM (ready set dice)
• FATE
  • We played one game in a Harry Potter setting, it's way less number-y compared to D&D-likes, but it's awesome to get people to be creative and I find myself and our group borrowing a lot from it in other games.
• Call of Cthulhu 7th
  • We play this off-and-on, especially around Halloween or whenever I feel like making a cool session. I've also made a pretty bomb (if I say so myself) track
• Dread
  • We haven't actually played this, but I borrowed the tower mechanic for a Call of Cthulhu game!

So, now something no one has mentioned yet; Ten Candles!

Let me tell you about it.

Ten Candles

These things are true, the world is dark.

What is the idea? Well, basically you and your group will be embarking on a story, which you co-author. The twist is, that in the end everyone dies. Additionally you have 10 lit candles on your table, which extinguish either due to bad rolls or naturally. Once the final one is out, the story is over.

It's described as a tragic horror game, and I honestly loved the session we played. This video gives a really awesome idea and honestly does a great job at making you feel the way a session goes

So give that a try! The book takes quite long to arrive, but is well worth it if you like collecting physical copies like me :)

Been lurking for weeks, got an invite and boy am I ready to add to this post!!

TL;DR Nobilis is a diceless, theater of the mind game in which you play as gods defending existence by wielding the metaphorical and physical instantiations of a concept that you rule (anything from fire to improvisation or symphonies).

Nobilis

I’m going to give a bunch of info because no one else has mentioned this amazing game yet and more people need to know about it.

Overview

Nobilis is a diceless rpg made by Jenna Katerin Moran that takes place in our world (kinda) in which the players each get to be the “Power” or “Noble” who controls some aspect of existence fighting to constantly defend the very essence of creation.

Characters

PC are “Nobles,” who each govern an “Estate.” An estate can be literally anything. My four PCs are Conflict, Protagonism, Fortress, and Balance. The characters are all members of the same “Celestial Family” who all serve an Imperator, the super op god who gave them their powers.

Fun examples I’ve brewed are Laundry, Change, and Merriment.

Gameplay

Nobilis is completely theater of the mind, diceless, and has no turn order. For the most part, a player says “I do a thing (which I can reasonably do)” and the DM says “Yep, that happens.”

But what can you do? Their are four main stats in the game as described below. You buy points in them and at any point you can do anything at or below your level. You get limited Miracle Points you can spend to go above your usual level.

• Aspect: physical and mental abilities. At low levels, you perform at peak human performance. At high levels, you can redefine physical possibilities such as stuffing a mountain into your pocket or drinking a lake.

• Domain: Manipulate physical manifestations of your estate. Throw fireballs, strike a TV set with lightning.

• Persona: Interact with the metaphorical or spiritual meanings of your estate. Make someone’s personality more fiery, make a TV set show a documentary about lightning.

• Treasure: Collect cool stuff, people, places, and symbols and wield them across time and space.

An Example

Two players, Nihilism and Improvisation were stuck in the middle of a desert. Here’s how they got out:

1. Nihilism uses low level aspect miracle (action) to cut off a piece of a cactus without hurting themself.
2. Improvisation uses a Persona “Enchantment” to apply a property of Improv to the piece of cactus. They make it “harder than it seems.”
3. Nihilism also uses persona to enchant the piece of cactus making it so it “spreads itself.”
4. They stand on top of their nice solid piece of cactus which grows right across the desert at a miraculous pace.

So what?

When you combine all this (and a lot of other complicated rules), you get a really cool game that lets the DM and players do really anything they can imagine. My players are literally constantly solving problems in new and creative ways.

The fact that it doesn’t have skill checks and is all theater of the mind and that my players are practically gods means that rather than prepping pages and pages of numbers, I prep concepts and general vibes. As they play, I can shape the world towards the story they seem to be enjoying but there’s no planned map of rooms or stat blocks.

Compare to DND?

It took me a long time to find Nobilis, a very long time to understand, and a very very long time to find a group and get them bought in. During that journey I have found had a lot of time to reflect on DND, which I have played a huge amount of.

Here’re a few things that stand out:

• I never liked the randomness in DND. If the big hulky gal with the axe smacks the wooden door, it should break open. If she smacks a steel wall, not much will happen. I don’t care what dice say.

• I never liked how much I had to say “no” as a DM. Players in DND already have a relatively limited range of abilities and if you implement the game RAW it just feels bad (in my experience).

• Speaking of RAW DND, I find that the amount of little crap like weight limits, tracking components, rest, etc was just such a constant headache I found myself just having parties ignore them.

• Backgrounds don’t really matter for gameplay. In Nobilis, there are extensive systems (which I wont take the time to describe unless asked) that turn RP/character background into highly relevant tools for PCs and DMs during gameplay. Character creation is a many hour process and is very relevant to gameplay.

All of these, and many other gripes with DND are “solved” in Nobilis.

I’ll stop this essay here but if any of this piques your interest I would be very very happy to reply or PM (hehe once I learn how) about anything Nobilis. I’m about 8 months into my first campaign and it is by far the best rpg experiences I’ve ever had and my party (all noobs) are in love with it.

Stars Without Number. I'm sure that I don't need to explain to a Kevin Crawford fan why, but...

I love sandbox. I love putting the power in the player's hands. The Firefly-like fun of "point your ship this way and see if you can survive on your wits" is incredibly satisfying, and the game system running it all is wonderfully simple.

I play (well, the campaign is on hiatus now, but our last session was not that long ago) In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas (aka INS/MV), that French TTRPG about angels and demons. I've written more extensively about my experience here on Tilde, but the short version is:

• Mechanically it's close to GURPS (later edition of In Nomine (the english version uses GURPS). Action resolution is done by throwing three d6, look at the first two for success/failure and look at the third one for the magnitude of said success/failure. The success/failure threshold can be adjusted by spending skill point and with contextual modifiers at the DM's will. For flavor, we call throw a d666 throw. Also for flavor, something satanic happens when the result is a 666, and something divine happens when the result is 111 (usually a flashy critical effect; "normal" critical happens when rolling a double).
• Story-wise it's contemporary satire of the French society. There's a huge conspiration ("the Great Game") that hides the fact to us normal human that everything in the Bible is real and that angel and demon are waging a secret war since Jesus' death. But being an angel doesn't means being nice (racist bigots are the backbone of God's army), and being a demon is more often than not more focused on corruption rather than senseless killing. And, this being a french game, there's a fair amount of internal political bickering and bureaucracy on both sides. Flavor example: you don't get experience points, but rather "administration point" that allows you to maybe get the new power/upgrade you want after submitting an official form. Those points are not gained naturally, but given as a reward by your hierarchical superior when reading your mission report.
• The DM is free to put whatever ambiance he/she wants, but the official adventures varies between epic (we've witnessed the birth of a new Demon-Prince with the magic of voodoo...) and humorous (... we had to communicate with her from within the dreamscape; being the mental equivalent of a 8 years old kid, it was filled with lethal princess, legally-not-jedis and super-demonic-stenai).

I will always evangelize for Barbarians of Lemuria. It's the first ttrpg I've liked enough to actually buy a paper copy of. It's incredibly flexible and incredibly simple and all of the roles are 2d6 sometimes with an advantage or disadvantage and you have to beat nine. That's it. You add direct numbers from your stat sheet and just getting 1 extra attack feels powerful. It's an homage to the sword and sourcery of old with heros that spend all their money at the end of each adventure. It's a good fun low crunch easy maths system with simple character sheets and minimal prep needed.

Through the Breach, a card-based TTRPG where you flip a deck of cards and can cheat a card from your personal deck if you don't like the result, assuming you have cards available. It's set in the Malifaux world, an early 1910s alternate timeline where a rift opened and introduced magic and another world into our world. It's got pretty much everything but leans more steampunk than anything else I think.

I'm the DM in my friend group (even if we are playing a board game) and we've been doing D&D 5E for the last 6 years now. We just finished our 3rd campaign so I suggested a change of pace, so we are doing a sci-fi themed game running with Traveller (Mongoose 2E ruleset). We just started last week though so I'm very new to running it--session zero was literally just rolling characters, which is a lot of fun.

haven't had the chance to play it yet, but I've got the book for The One Ring not too long ago because it was so beautifully made and I just love LotR.

I've got some experience DM'ing DnD but I don't currently have a group to play TOR with. has anyone here had the chance to play it?

I really love scifi, tons of really good options there, but if I have to pick one, it should be Traveller for sure.

I'm currently playing Moongose Traveller 2e and it's great, the system manages to deliver a ton of different types of scifi adventures of all kinds (diplomatic, combat, space, planetary, social, merchant), I love the semi-random character gen and I really like that characters are competent but not heroic.

It has a balance that makes me happy without stopping the game from being an "party of misfits on at adventure" kind of game.

I also love the gear progression (instead of levels), you can improve skills but it's slow.

I'm a long-time player of all things Palladium. Yeah, I hear what the peanut gallery says about it, but I love their games dearly and honestly have more fun playing and running their games than most others these days. Beyond that, I'm also a new but growing fan of the 2D20 system from Modiphius. I got into it last year to play the Conan games, but then quickly fell in love with it and moved into Homeworld, Fallout, and now some of the newly-developed community content. I'm excited to see where they take this system in the future.

I really enjoyed Monster of the Week (https://evilhat.com/product/monster-of-the-week/)

It's more story driven and less about the math (just uses six sided dice), which is nice for more casual players. Plus it has an urban fantasy feel which was a nice change of pace from the medieval or futuristic settings.

I've begun collecting various game systems to improve the Curse of Strahd campaign I'm running for some friends: Pathfinder 2e, Fate, Index Card RPG, and Microscope RPG to name a few.

For me, I've shifted from "Let's switch systems at my table," to "How can I elevate the system that everyone already knows."

Every group is different, but this video got me thinking about what's "core" at our particular table and how I, as the GM, have the power make a great campaign regardless of the system used if I understand game fundamentals well enough. https://youtu.be/YD06aKOf_ok

That said, I would be VERY interested to hear if anyone has tried more surreal game systems like Troika! or Electric Bastionland. What was your experience like?

I've been digging into Ironsworn: Starforged, very cool solo TTRPG with a cool way of telling stories

I'm in general not a creative person so I struggle a bit, but I have heard people having great success using ChatGPT to help the storytelling too

I got my group into Dungeon Crawl Classics! They loved playing through a level zero funnel, and the game's level of zaniness is perfect for a fun weekend game. Ever since the OGL debacle, I've become a bit addicted to buying different TTRPG rules sets and have tried a little bit of everything presented to me.

I'm currently working on my own TTRPG, specifically for one-shots. It's designed to be what I thought Fate Accelerated was going to be before I ran a game and realised that it wasn't. Extremely RP focused and very very very simple. Here's the "Philosophy" page of the current version, it's called "One Shot Engine":

One Shot Engine is a rules-light TTRPG primarily designed for short, self-contained stories. It also aims to require minimal setup for both GMs and players, and require minimal materials to play (one six-sided dice, paper and a pen). It aims to be:

• Easy to learn.
• Unobtrusive.
• Suitable for any setting.

One Shot Engine has a strong focus on roleplaying, rather than number-crunching. This allows players to spend less time writing characters and GMs less time writing stat blocks for enemies. Everyone has it easy! The game also emphasizes GM-Player discussion; being able to justify why an action would work is just as important as rolling to see if it does.

I'm bad at doing maths and remembering things, so I vastly prefer moments where the RP takes the lead. FAE was good, but it was too collaborative for my purposes. I wanted to run a game that was a little more railroady (as I think one shots need to be) and FAE just didn't really do the job. It's good for getting together with people and making a story, though, here's a video of Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, John Rogers, and Ryan Macklin (one of the games designers) playing Fate Core, FAE's more complex older brother.

I run a lot of Delta Green. It started as a third party expansion for modern, X-files(ish) for Call of Cthulhu and became its own (arguably) better game.

The premise is that your characters are part of an off-the-books government conspiracy that protects the world from unimaginable threats. There, likely, is no backup coming to help you, and you're typically operating under flimsy cover identities which could fall apart at any minute. And even if you succeed, you're still going to need to complete a cover up that people will believe... because humanity cannot know that sometimes they are no more than minutes from being totally wiped out.

It hits all the marks for me. Easy to teach system (d100 roll under system), and because its modern horror, you can essentially run it like a serialized tv show (if the characters don't get wiped). The modules are some of the best in the industry. You get everything I love: investigations, mythos horror, hard decisions, and inter character drama.

If you're remotely interested, check out Last Things Last on drivethrurpg. Its all you need to run a quick adventure and if this is in your wheelhouse, I guarantee you'll be hooked.

Disappointed to see no mention yet of Massif Press's two amazing RPGs: Lancer and ICON.

Lancer: https://massif-press.itch.io/corebook-pdf-free
ICON: https://massif-press.itch.io/icon

Both follow the same core gameplay desogn, which I really love - splitting the game into a rules-light narrative mode for your wandering, conversing etc. and a nice, crunchy, very well balanced tactical combat.

Lancer was developed first and is unapologetically a space opera mecha pilot rpg. Hundreds of potential mech combos, well fleshed out setting background and three supplementary books released now. Best Kickstarters I've ever backed.

ICON is still in beta but it's effectively the same idea tailored for fantasy. I personally love what they've done with classes to optimize customization.

Both are heavily supported by the community - the discord is bumping and Lancer in particular has a lot of excellent homebrew plus a great web tool called COMP/CON.

Many of them, actually.

• Mythras - I've been pretty heavy into this for about 9 years now. Better combat, more flexible magic, culture and career (no classes) make mechanical differences. Feels like where I should be
• 13th age - really hit well with my group. we pull Backgrounds from it into any other games we can come up with.
• Cortex Prime - I have been playing this since Leverage, Firefly, and Marvel heroic were things. This is my narrative game. I think it does genre focused media based games better than anything else

Dating myself here but I’m stoked to see Star Frontiers was released by TSR. It never caught on as DND but was a blast to play. Going to finally order the damn thing.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/06/the-newest-tsr-relaunches-classic-star-frontiers-rpg.html

Unknown Armies!

I know this is more of a niche TTRPG, but Unknown Armies quickly became my favorite tabletop game sometime during the middle of the 2nd Edition run. Online friends of mine merely had to put the rulebook in front of me and I was immediately hooked. Basically, you and your party are a group of profoundly disturbed individuals, but as it turns out, having peculiar idiosyncrasies to the point of near-madness is what's required to perform legitimate works of magic in UA's universe. It's set in the midst of an occult underground of the 1990s, with many different secret cabals and cults vying for control of all of the unseen currents and magical artifacts they can get their hands on. UA is a game of conspiracy, deceit, and madness, with a punishing and visceral combat system. Definitely worth looking into!

One of my groups is playing Traveler, an older SciFi TTRPG with more of a focus on rp and more of a gritty realism. It's D6 based. Personally I really love the character creation process that has you roll for how each stage of your life turns out up until the point the campaign starts. It's been super fun overall.

I never got into RPGs for the D&Ds, so here's just some games that I love:

Primetime Adventures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primetime_Adventures

In a Wicked Age
http://www.lumpley.com/wicked.html

Apocalypse World
http://apocalypse-world.com/

My Life with Master
http://halfmeme.com/master.html