I'll repost/update an old comment about this, my answers have not changed. ;) Earthdawn. Man, that was the ultimate fantasy RPG. Took all of D&D's tropes and built a universe where they all made...
I'll repost/update an old comment about this, my answers have not changed. ;)
Earthdawn. Man, that was the ultimate fantasy RPG. Took all of D&D's tropes and built a universe where they all made sense, and that game had some of the best world/history I've ever seen. I actually own a hard copy of every single book from first edition, all the box sets, and even had the Dragons book (which was finished but never made it past being a pdf file at the office) printed out to finish out the set.
In that system, everyone is a wizard. There are magical and physical ways to do everything. Magical usually wins, and there are ways to combine them. That solved the classic balance problem - your warrior is just as magical as your wizard, in very different but exceptionally deadly ways. The leveling system was the perfect blend of skill based progression and acquiring new abilities. XP was actual money you spent on upgrading your character, it was a completely points-build system. It'd take you literal years of gaming every weekend to get anywhere near max level, and multi-classing was a breeze.
It was crunchy as fuck, though. Steep learning curve, unclear how to progress your character if you weren't comfy with charts and lots of math. Once you got used to it, then it shined, but getting someone up to speed was work. Magic items were all like D&D artifacts - powerful, with a unique history, and you had to learn that history (and spend your experience points) to unlock those powers. Typical ones had ten levels and were as costly to fully unlock as one of the player's core skills was. That mechanic could solve mudflation problems in modern MMOs. :P
It's had several editions since then, every so often a game company wants to make a new edition and pays FASA for the rights to riff on the universe. Several of the new editions have changed many things about the classes, or altered the core mechanics. It's not to say there's no room for improvement, but I always felt like nobody managed to improve on 1st edition very much. They'd fix some things, break others.
Oh yeah, and in Earthdawn, the world was basically in the middle of being eaten by Cthulhu. It was also a high-horror fantasy. I'd wager it'd be a lot of fun if someone who loves Call of Cthulhu were to run an Earthdawn game. They'd feel right at home.
My other love is Continuum. Take two numbers from that game's mechanics and put them on any character sheet from any game, and bam, functional, simple, impeccable time travel mechanics. The rest of the system was a skill based one with three stats, incredibly simple... and your abilities just leveled up each time you used them in game, no xp. It was remarkably effective.
If you could get more than 40 pages into this book without bleeding from your eyes trying to play 4d chess with the authors, kudos. It was so dense, these guys really put some thought into how time travel works. It utterly changes the game by introducing an entire game of its own. This game is hard to run because the plot gets weird. All your characters will time travel off to do something, then realize they forgot to set a rendevouz time so they could all meet back up again afterwards, and are now scattered all over history having to find each other.
They had groovy paradox mechanics as well, incredible things like godlike augmented humans... it remains one of the most unashamedly creative game books I've ever read. Gun combat was so lethal in this game... time combat had its own rules like killing your enemy, traveling back to the start of the fight, and showing him his head so he knows he loses. In a D10 system you get a -2 for that. Everything in this game was a single D10 roll. Maybe one or two modifiers, that was it.
Edit: I just now realized that Graham Hancock's lost civilization is actually in this book, it's Antedesertium. The past in Continuum is not at all what you might expect it to be, and Atlantis is a big deal.
Deadlands is another great game. The spaghetti western with meat. More importantly, playing cards for the initiative system (best implementation ever, no kidding) and casting spells, poker chips for buying your way out of trouble and doing cool things. Having the cards and chips makes this game a blast to play, doubly so if whisky is involved. It also has the best gunfighting mechanics I've ever seen. Tons of fun, and pretty dark, it's another post-apocalypse scenario.
I'll also plug Paranoia for making the PCs killing and betraying each other into the game and going full 1984 mode. This one is a blast but it really needs just the right type of gamemaster to shine brightest.
Then there's Unknown Armies with the finest madness mechanics and fight/flight/freeze system, brilliant additions to a game you can harvest for just about any system... not that this one isn't also amazing on its own. One of the best reads of a gaming book I've ever had, top tier writing.
I must also shout out Cheapass Games. They put out piles and piles of games, a buck or two a piece, and they are so insanely creative they will melt your brain. Just one or two pages per game, some dice or tokens, that's it - simple as it can get for tabletop. The good news is a lot of their classic games are free downloads ready to print out and go. Next time your group is about to call off the game because one too many players didn't make it, break out any of these instead of calling it off, and have a blast.
Oh, man. Earthdawn really is the best. I gush about that setting and system all the time and it feels like I've only met a dozen other people that have even heard of it. It's by far my favorite...
Oh, man. Earthdawn really is the best. I gush about that setting and system all the time and it feels like I've only met a dozen other people that have even heard of it. It's by far my favorite thing to play. Crunchy and confusing at times, like you mentioned, but the setting is masterful, and with the rules and setting being built for each other, it really does make for an amazing gaming experience once you get a few sessions under your belt and start to understand how everything works.
I always wish for other systems to adopt some ideas from magic items in Earthdawn. For years, I'd play D&D and Pathfinder and it's like "oh, you find the +1 sword of whatever the fuck that belonged to this dude". Okay, neat, that won't matter ever again. Whereas in Earthdawn, the party I'm in has had entire storylines revolving around discovering the history of a single item. I really, really love that game.
Fun fact for those reading these comments that don't know: Earthdawn is in the same setting as Shadowrun, just thousands of years before. Magic levels of the world rise and fall over time, so Shadowrun is the 6th world (the 6th instance of rising or falling of magic), the 5th world is the time of no magic between Earthdawn and Shadowrun, and the 4th world is when Earthdawn is set, when magic exists in the world like in the 6th world (though the way the systems play and even the rules around magic and all that are VASTLY different, it's just sort of a fun, loose connection between them, with some legendary characters, places, and items appearing in both settings).
It still has the best magic spellcasting I've ever seen. After playing Earthdawn, vancian casting can get well and truly fucked - it's atrocious by comparison and I have a hard time putting up...
It still has the best magic spellcasting I've ever seen. After playing Earthdawn, vancian casting can get well and truly fucked - it's atrocious by comparison and I have a hard time putting up with it even now. My warrior can swing his sword all day long. If my wizard can't cast spells all day long the exact same way, is he really a wizard? I think not. Earthdawn solved that problem. Attunement on the fly was the perfect mechanic to bury 'spell slots' with as well. You can swap them on the fly if you want, but there are risks...
I've been playing an illusionist in a years long campaign and I heavily agree that the spellcasting is amazing and just makes D&D spellcasting feel boring in comparison.
I've been playing an illusionist in a years long campaign and I heavily agree that the spellcasting is amazing and just makes D&D spellcasting feel boring in comparison.
I adore Swords and Wizardry. I moved over to the system from 5th edition D&D and honestly, I don't think I'll ever go back. The freedom is given me as a DM, as well as my players is really...
I adore Swords and Wizardry. I moved over to the system from 5th edition D&D and honestly, I don't think I'll ever go back.
The freedom is given me as a DM, as well as my players is really special. I like how modular it is too, the fact that I can use any OSR books with little to no effort is a bonus.
On top of that, S&W showed me that there is more to TTRPG's than Dungeons and Dragons. If it wasn't for Swords and Wizardry, I wouldn't have tried over game systems.
Oh that takes me back, I should still have my near-complete set of Earthdawn 1st edition rulebooks in the basement. Absolutely fantastic world. And a fairly intelligent system overall, as you say....
Oh that takes me back, I should still have my near-complete set of Earthdawn 1st edition rulebooks in the basement.
Absolutely fantastic world. And a fairly intelligent system overall, as you say. I think me and my school friends played it on and off for... 10 years or so? Until we had mostly moved apart and it became a bit of an issue to keep going.
My first TTRPG was Vampire: the Masquerade. I didn't have a chance to play it much, but the Storytelling system was really neat to me. I am more of a fan of the Storyteller system from the...
My first TTRPG was Vampire: the Masquerade. I didn't have a chance to play it much, but the Storytelling system was really neat to me. I am more of a fan of the Storyteller system from the Chronicles of Darkness line these days, though. It's a little easier to play with characters from different splats, and while I still generally hate combat, it's a lot easier for me in CoD.
My most extensive recent TTRPG experience has been in Exalted 3e, and I love Storyteller (and Exalted specifically). I feel like it really lets me express a character through the mechanics, which...
My most extensive recent TTRPG experience has been in Exalted 3e, and I love Storyteller (and Exalted specifically). I feel like it really lets me express a character through the mechanics, which as someone who definitely finds the characterization part as the hard part, is very welcome
There was a discussion a while ago that was similar, for reference: What's your not-D&D RPG, and why?. To be clear, I'm not saying not to post this, just saying that there are some interesting...
There was a discussion a while ago that was similar, for reference: What's your not-D&D RPG, and why?. To be clear, I'm not saying not to post this, just saying that there are some interesting answers there for reference. I'll copy what I said there, as my answer has not changed, though I have just squashed two top level comments there together.
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 nationalitiesfactions. 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.
The Quiet Year
I've got another one that doesn't really fit with the others I posted, so I made a whole separate comment. I've played this one.
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.
I loved the 7th Sea RPG and so did the players. For some reason they all roleplayed a lot more than with other systems. Something in the setting stimulates the need to make quips and dramatic...
I loved the 7th Sea RPG and so did the players. For some reason they all roleplayed a lot more than with other systems. Something in the setting stimulates the need to make quips and dramatic statements while cleaving your way through dozens of underlings.
Delta Green is my favorite system right now, and I'd recommend it to anybody who is interested in the narrative possibilities of tabletop games. I stumbled upon Delta Green last year while looking...
Delta Green is my favorite system right now, and I'd recommend it to anybody who is interested in the narrative possibilities of tabletop games. I stumbled upon Delta Green last year while looking for a system to run a campaign in the SCP universe, but I ended up ditching that idea in favor of simply running Delta Green modules.
Delta Green is set in the modern era. Incomprehensible horrors lurk just beyond the veil of this reality and threaten to wreak havoc on humanity. Players are expendable "Agents" who, for their own reasons, have each taken on the thankless responsibility of neutralizing and concealing unnatural incursions. The Agents are assigned to these operations by a shadowy conspiracy.
Each Delta Green module is typically one such operation. These modules are very evocatively written; NPC characters are fleshed out, and the scenarios themselves are compelling variations on the ever-present theme of cosmic horror. I also really like the faux-"dossier" aesthetic used by the Delta Green books - overall, the presentation punches way above its weight class and is on par with D&D.
Each Agent has a Sanity score, which inevitably erodes as they are exposed to the unnatural. To preserve their Sanity, Agents have to make interesting choices that also have narrative consequences. For instance, instead of losing Sanity points, an Agent can project that damage onto a close relationship, harming that relationship but preserving their own Sanity.
Need To Know (Delta Green's equivalent to D&D's Starter Kit) is freely available here and includes a short module, "Last Things Last," which is generally viewed as the best possible introduction to the game. For an actual play of Delta Green, I'd recommend Get In The Trunk.
I've been a DeltaGreen handler for almost a year now thanks to Get in the Trunk after never having run any game system before. It is like nothing else I have ever played in its gameplay, themes,...
I've been a DeltaGreen handler for almost a year now thanks to Get in the Trunk after never having run any game system before. It is like nothing else I have ever played in its gameplay, themes, simplicity, detail, and fun factor. I have gotten lost in the lore of the world like no other game. I would also highly recommend people give this awesome game a try.
Blades in the Dark. I love its slightly crunchier take on PbtA style games and the low prep. I've only played a handful of sessions with it though, and I have heard that longer form campaigns...
Blades in the Dark. I love its slightly crunchier take on PbtA style games and the low prep. I've only played a handful of sessions with it though, and I have heard that longer form campaigns don't do well in the system as character scaling isn't amazing in the system.
In general though, the low prep systems are amazing. For example, you dont "plan" things, you just GO. If you run into an obstacle that you would have planned for, you can have a flashback where you did plan for it (at the cost of stress). Similarly, you only choose the bulk of your inventory before setting out (low/medium/high) which dictates your general level of stealthiness/blend-in-ability. Once you are there, whenever you need something, you just check it off because clearly you thought ahead to bring it (until you are full up on bulk).
It just takes away so many of the things that slow a game down and all you are left with is the die rolling fun!
I was going to say Blades in the Dark too. I like that the system encourages role playing too. You get XP based on whether you've roleplayed certain aspects to the character. I also like that the...
I was going to say Blades in the Dark too.
I like that the system encourages role playing too. You get XP based on whether you've roleplayed certain aspects to the character. I also like that the consequences of pushing your characters too hard are inbuilt into the system. Basically gaining a trauma, and having indulge in a vice to bring your stress down.
Anything by John Battle particularly .dungeon and the one about space pirates/Firefly vibes, the name escapes me. Batts just has such a creative mind, makes clear and malleable rules that are...
Anything by John Battle particularly .dungeon and the one about space pirates/Firefly vibes, the name escapes me. Batts just has such a creative mind, makes clear and malleable rules that are simultaneously beginner friendly and fun for advanced players, and always included cool art/stories to go along with the systems.
The other much more popular ttrpg I like is Dialect. It's beautiful and incredibly fun and moving. You work together to create the language and history of a community and as the world changes so does the language.
Thank you for bringing Dialect to my attention! I must track down a copy. The Venn diagram of tabletop gamers and armchair linguists in my social circle is ... well, 3-5 suggested players.
Thank you for bringing Dialect to my attention! I must track down a copy. The Venn diagram of tabletop gamers and armchair linguists in my social circle is ... well, 3-5 suggested players.
My favorite TTRPG, period. Stars Without Number. Kevin Crawford made an amazing game (then he did it again with Worlds Without Number, but I digress.) Skill checks are done with 2D6 (or if...
My favorite TTRPG, period. Stars Without Number. Kevin Crawford made an amazing game (then he did it again with Worlds Without Number, but I digress.) Skill checks are done with 2D6 (or if sufficiently talented, the best 2D6 out of a dice pool), combat is D20. Combat is, by default, pretty lethal, so the game RAW wants you to use your brain.
Podcasts? I've only found two, but man, are they good. There's 7th Star To The Right, which is about a group of psychics and a robot going on adventures in space. But the most well known would be Astronomica, which is about a bunch of non-psychics and a robot going on adventures in space.
I've heard about this one here and there and there seems to be consensus that it's pretty amazing. I'll have to look more into it and see how it compares to DnD, especially Worlds Without Number...
I've heard about this one here and there and there seems to be consensus that it's pretty amazing. I'll have to look more into it and see how it compares to DnD, especially Worlds Without Number which might be easier to get my group into since they aren't big into scifi sadly
There are! However, the game's biggest selling point is it's a sandbox game, meaning that the preferred-by-many method of play is the "pick a star and go" type. But as with just about any TTRPG,...
There are! However, the game's biggest selling point is it's a sandbox game, meaning that the preferred-by-many method of play is the "pick a star and go" type. But as with just about any TTRPG, there's no wrong way to play it.
To expand on this, FATE (online version here) is a system that is used to build actual roleplaying systems, basically. Or rather it's hypergeneric and hence can be adapted/specialized into...
To expand on this, FATE (online version here) is a system that is used to build actual roleplaying systems, basically. Or rather it's hypergeneric and hence can be adapted/specialized into ~anything.
Space mecha combat? Sure! The Dresden Files RPG, wizards in modern cities? Of course!
Magical cats protecting their burdens (humans) against evil demons from the other side? Easy!
The RPG re-enactment of The Rookie? Do it!
As /u/oliak says, the key here is that it's incredibly RP/storytelling-centric. So much so that I'd call it more of a collaborative story-telling experience than what people usually assume to be a tabletop RPG, it sits on the opposite ned of the dungeongrinder games. Even combat is more about describing interesting moment-to-moment thrills than defeating somebody, owing to the central system: Aspects and Invoking Aspects.
In FATE-derived games, everything has aspects. Or is an aspect. For example, going back to the magical cats - a pre-made scenario called The Secrets of Cats - each guardian cat has 5 aspects:
Your high concept. What is this character, in a nutshell.
Your vice. Everyone has a bad side, after all.
Your true name, incredibly important among cats as magic ties to it and latches onto it.
Your burden(s), the senseless bumbling idiots who you somehow still have an affection for and want to protect.
Your "free" aspect. In my groups we always use 1-2 aspects for backstory interleaving, so another person in the group will fill this in after they have created the part of the backstory their cat shows up in.
Now, during ... about anything, really, you can spend a "fate point" to invoke an aspect. This essentially allows you to overrule the gamemaster, and say "But wait, X is my burden and he's a firefighter. He's being called to this emergency, and I hear the call through his radio. I sneak out with him and jump into his car to ride along, that's how I can be at the scene early!". Like I said, collaborative storytelling.
How do you get fate points? You could mess with somebody in your groups, invoking their aspects against them. Give them a fate point. More commonly, the GM will do this. You might describe that your cat wants to cast a spell, but akshually because your high concept is "Protector of Justice", you cannot assume someone is guilty, and using their true name that they told you privately in trust against them to track them would go against what you stand for, you won't do that. Here, have a fate point!
It's an incredibly versatile system, what I mention there is already highly specific. I should note that much of the beauty comes not only from the collaborative storytelling, but also from the collaborative worldbuilding. Character creation should always be a joint session, deciding on aspects of the world and place you play in. Likewise, adapting some pre-made scenario to your own needs or even making one from scratch is an amazing experience once you've played a few times.
And if you find the rules too heavy-handed with their focus on self-created content (to be fair they're small A5 books!) you can always go for FATE accelerated, a version more optimized for short stints and one-shots.
Warhammer Fantasy (1st and 2nd edition), Cyberpunk 2020, Traveller (Mangoose), Delta Green. Warhammer Fantasy - Blackadder-esque world that sometimes dips into Lovecraft. What's not to love?...
Warhammer Fantasy (1st and 2nd edition), Cyberpunk 2020, Traveller (Mangoose), Delta Green.
Warhammer Fantasy - Blackadder-esque world that sometimes dips into Lovecraft. What's not to love?
Cyberpunk 2020 - Outside the usual allure of cyberpunk as a genre, It's one of few games that really (i.e. mechanically) rewards being aggressive in combat. It's also almost impossible to make a non-viable character.
Traveller - A superb game that offers almost too many options of playing. Both in tone and in execution, from Star Trek to Futurama, you can make it work if everyone in the group is on board.
Delta Green - You're a cell of federal agents formed as an extra-governmental conspiracy to keep Lovecraftian mythos at bay a while longer. Think Call of Cthulhu, but player characters are somewhat aware of what's up and have a good reason to work together from the beginning. I prefer the '90s edition because it feels more like X-Files than MIB, but both are fun.
I love that so many people mentioned Earthdawn, but despite many fun memories, it's not my favourite.
Delta Green getting a lot of love in this thread, need to check that out. I've also heard of traveller but long long ago, and honestly it sounds like my ideal TTRPG... But as you said getting...
Delta Green getting a lot of love in this thread, need to check that out.
I've also heard of traveller but long long ago, and honestly it sounds like my ideal TTRPG... But as you said getting everyone on board is crucial
Regarding Traveller, it's perfectly fine for theme to evolve and change with the game's goings-on. Your group can travel to a very different part of the galaxy (par for the course) or lose their...
Regarding Traveller, it's perfectly fine for theme to evolve and change with the game's goings-on. Your group can travel to a very different part of the galaxy (par for the course) or lose their stuff (happens, from piracy to losing an ill-conceived bet) and this can put you in very different circumstances. I had a group go from jaded mercs shafted by life and command to thwarting a narco cartel, and it felt seamless.
Call of Cthulhu - investigation, squishy PC’s, handouts, maps. We used to play a comedy RPG game called Hunter Planet in between larger games. Iirc, players were alien tourists coming to Earth...
Call of Cthulhu - investigation, squishy PC’s, handouts, maps.
We used to play a comedy RPG game called Hunter Planet in between larger games. Iirc, players were alien tourists coming to Earth (Dirt I think it was called) to hunt humans as game. Hilarity ensues :)
Heroes Unlimited/TMNT/Rifts - it was our game of choice back in high school and university (90’s) when we weren’t playing DND.
I'm a big fan of Cyberpunk RED, if just for the free monthly mini-expansions they do every month. It balances the brutality you expect from a Cyberpunk system with the approachability of modern...
I'm a big fan of Cyberpunk RED, if just for the free monthly mini-expansions they do every month. It balances the brutality you expect from a Cyberpunk system with the approachability of modern D&D. Pondsmith really knows what he's doing.
I so want to get in on this game. I have this idea for a killer who's been so extensively cybered that with her fake plastic skin, she looks like a psycho Barbie doll.
I so want to get in on this game. I have this idea for a killer who's been so extensively cybered that with her fake plastic skin, she looks like a psycho Barbie doll.
Anima RPG It's a nutty as heck anime-inspired RPG originally published in Spain, then translated into English for international release. It's based on the Hackmaster system, so everything is d100...
It's a nutty as heck anime-inspired RPG originally published in Spain, then translated into English for international release. It's based on the Hackmaster system, so everything is d100 or d10 based, but the standardization of the mechanics (everything is an opposed roll, flat check, or roll-under) means that the game can have 4 different systems (Magic, Ki, Psionics, and Summoning) that can be modularly included to make whatever kind of anime-inspired game you want to make. Dragonball Z? Ki. Yu Yu Hakusho? Ki and a little Summoning. Fire Force? Psionic pyromancy.
Trying to play in the system is super frontloaded, and making a character is super complicated using a point-buy system for all abilities, but actual play is decently streamlined.
Ain't no one talked GURPS yet and that's a shame. It has rules for basically any setting you want - high fantasy, sci fi, modern, your weird custom setting, you name it. Build a character with...
Ain't no one talked GURPS yet and that's a shame. It has rules for basically any setting you want - high fantasy, sci fi, modern, your weird custom setting, you name it. Build a character with basically any power set you like. No rolling stats up - you basically purchase your character using a set amount of points, some for stats, some for skills, and some for advantages and disadvantages. Systems are relatively simple, most actions involving just one kind of roll. If you want more I highly recommend Chris Normand's videos on the subject on YouTube.
A system that I've only played a little but has always been on my mind is Realms Of Pugmire. It's a system where everyone plays as anthropomorphic animals, that were all originally...
A system that I've only played a little but has always been on my mind is Realms Of Pugmire. It's a system where everyone plays as anthropomorphic animals, that were all originally housepets/domesticated animals that were "Uplifted" by their humans into consciousness. The humans are long gone, and hold a mythical status among the pets they left behind, who have now developed into a feudal society.
The whole game and setting really ties together around this theme of playing housepets in a fantasy setting in a fascinating way, such as there being invisible demons called the Unseen, to represent when your animals seemingly see something you don't, or bark at something that isn't there. Relics from the time of humans are hugely powerful, and hold immense value in the new society. Magic is flavored as being just very advanced technology that the animals don't understand. Bits of plastic are the currency, due to its large but not unlimited quantity and availability, and the process of making it has been lost to time.
Different species have different traits and societies. Dogs are firecely loyal and have a main capital with one or two other offshoots, while cats have six or seven seperate monarchies, that scheme and plot against one another. Badgers (and other marsupials I think? This part of the setting is least developed and is up next in their line of books expanding on different parts of the settings) are largely tribal beings, roaming the plains. Lizards are nomadic travelers, rarely seen, while rats and mice live deep under ground, scavenging in the ruins of the old world, in subway tunnels and caverns and the like. There's a sea to the south that has been so wrecked by ecological disasters of the past that it's highly acidic, so plastic hulls coat the sea crafts, and there is still a thriving sea life for pirates and traders and the like.
The setting is really what fascinates me most here, and the system itself is unfortunately a little basic, for lack of a better word. It's partially aimed at beginners and younger players, and the system is very light mechanically, so it's great for building on top of and making it your own, but I like having a fully fleshed out rule set personally. It's also only meant for shorter campaigns, lvl 1-10 type deal, so there isn't quite as much variety in terms of feats and build options. But the setting really triggers a deep fascination in me to the point where I've been considering just homebrewing the system to more what I want or maybe converting the setting to another system.
I haven't played it personally, but I've been really enjoying the newest arc in The Adventure Zone (Steeplechase) in which they're playing Blades in the Dark. The flashback and stress mechanics...
I haven't played it personally, but I've been really enjoying the newest arc in The Adventure Zone (Steeplechase) in which they're playing Blades in the Dark. The flashback and stress mechanics are great and I'd like to try a few missions using Blades in the Dark with my group some time.
Absolutely loved CthulhuTech when I played it. The setting was a ton of fun (Neon Genesis Evangelion crossed with Lovecraftian horror, what's not to love) and the game play felt good. One drawback...
Absolutely loved CthulhuTech when I played it. The setting was a ton of fun (Neon Genesis Evangelion crossed with Lovecraftian horror, what's not to love) and the game play felt good. One drawback is that there are wildly different power levels for the archetypes, so it can be a problem if one person is controlling a mech in combat and another player is just chilling there with a pistol, but you can handle that in a few ways.
I'll repost/update an old comment about this, my answers have not changed. ;)
Earthdawn. Man, that was the ultimate fantasy RPG. Took all of D&D's tropes and built a universe where they all made sense, and that game had some of the best world/history I've ever seen. I actually own a hard copy of every single book from first edition, all the box sets, and even had the Dragons book (which was finished but never made it past being a pdf file at the office) printed out to finish out the set.
In that system, everyone is a wizard. There are magical and physical ways to do everything. Magical usually wins, and there are ways to combine them. That solved the classic balance problem - your warrior is just as magical as your wizard, in very different but exceptionally deadly ways. The leveling system was the perfect blend of skill based progression and acquiring new abilities. XP was actual money you spent on upgrading your character, it was a completely points-build system. It'd take you literal years of gaming every weekend to get anywhere near max level, and multi-classing was a breeze.
It was crunchy as fuck, though. Steep learning curve, unclear how to progress your character if you weren't comfy with charts and lots of math. Once you got used to it, then it shined, but getting someone up to speed was work. Magic items were all like D&D artifacts - powerful, with a unique history, and you had to learn that history (and spend your experience points) to unlock those powers. Typical ones had ten levels and were as costly to fully unlock as one of the player's core skills was. That mechanic could solve mudflation problems in modern MMOs. :P
It's had several editions since then, every so often a game company wants to make a new edition and pays FASA for the rights to riff on the universe. Several of the new editions have changed many things about the classes, or altered the core mechanics. It's not to say there's no room for improvement, but I always felt like nobody managed to improve on 1st edition very much. They'd fix some things, break others.
Oh yeah, and in Earthdawn, the world was basically in the middle of being eaten by Cthulhu. It was also a high-horror fantasy. I'd wager it'd be a lot of fun if someone who loves Call of Cthulhu were to run an Earthdawn game. They'd feel right at home.
My other love is Continuum. Take two numbers from that game's mechanics and put them on any character sheet from any game, and bam, functional, simple, impeccable time travel mechanics. The rest of the system was a skill based one with three stats, incredibly simple... and your abilities just leveled up each time you used them in game, no xp. It was remarkably effective.
If you could get more than 40 pages into this book without bleeding from your eyes trying to play 4d chess with the authors, kudos. It was so dense, these guys really put some thought into how time travel works. It utterly changes the game by introducing an entire game of its own. This game is hard to run because the plot gets weird. All your characters will time travel off to do something, then realize they forgot to set a rendevouz time so they could all meet back up again afterwards, and are now scattered all over history having to find each other.
They had groovy paradox mechanics as well, incredible things like godlike augmented humans... it remains one of the most unashamedly creative game books I've ever read. Gun combat was so lethal in this game... time combat had its own rules like killing your enemy, traveling back to the start of the fight, and showing him his head so he knows he loses. In a D10 system you get a -2 for that. Everything in this game was a single D10 roll. Maybe one or two modifiers, that was it.
Edit: I just now realized that Graham Hancock's lost civilization is actually in this book, it's Antedesertium. The past in Continuum is not at all what you might expect it to be, and Atlantis is a big deal.
Deadlands is another great game. The spaghetti western with meat. More importantly, playing cards for the initiative system (best implementation ever, no kidding) and casting spells, poker chips for buying your way out of trouble and doing cool things. Having the cards and chips makes this game a blast to play, doubly so if whisky is involved. It also has the best gunfighting mechanics I've ever seen. Tons of fun, and pretty dark, it's another post-apocalypse scenario.
I'll also plug Paranoia for making the PCs killing and betraying each other into the game and going full 1984 mode. This one is a blast but it really needs just the right type of gamemaster to shine brightest.
Then there's Unknown Armies with the finest madness mechanics and fight/flight/freeze system, brilliant additions to a game you can harvest for just about any system... not that this one isn't also amazing on its own. One of the best reads of a gaming book I've ever had, top tier writing.
I must also shout out Cheapass Games. They put out piles and piles of games, a buck or two a piece, and they are so insanely creative they will melt your brain. Just one or two pages per game, some dice or tokens, that's it - simple as it can get for tabletop. The good news is a lot of their classic games are free downloads ready to print out and go. Next time your group is about to call off the game because one too many players didn't make it, break out any of these instead of calling it off, and have a blast.
Oh, man. Earthdawn really is the best. I gush about that setting and system all the time and it feels like I've only met a dozen other people that have even heard of it. It's by far my favorite thing to play. Crunchy and confusing at times, like you mentioned, but the setting is masterful, and with the rules and setting being built for each other, it really does make for an amazing gaming experience once you get a few sessions under your belt and start to understand how everything works.
I always wish for other systems to adopt some ideas from magic items in Earthdawn. For years, I'd play D&D and Pathfinder and it's like "oh, you find the +1 sword of whatever the fuck that belonged to this dude". Okay, neat, that won't matter ever again. Whereas in Earthdawn, the party I'm in has had entire storylines revolving around discovering the history of a single item. I really, really love that game.
Fun fact for those reading these comments that don't know: Earthdawn is in the same setting as Shadowrun, just thousands of years before. Magic levels of the world rise and fall over time, so Shadowrun is the 6th world (the 6th instance of rising or falling of magic), the 5th world is the time of no magic between Earthdawn and Shadowrun, and the 4th world is when Earthdawn is set, when magic exists in the world like in the 6th world (though the way the systems play and even the rules around magic and all that are VASTLY different, it's just sort of a fun, loose connection between them, with some legendary characters, places, and items appearing in both settings).
It still has the best magic spellcasting I've ever seen. After playing Earthdawn, vancian casting can get well and truly fucked - it's atrocious by comparison and I have a hard time putting up with it even now. My warrior can swing his sword all day long. If my wizard can't cast spells all day long the exact same way, is he really a wizard? I think not. Earthdawn solved that problem. Attunement on the fly was the perfect mechanic to bury 'spell slots' with as well. You can swap them on the fly if you want, but there are risks...
I've been playing an illusionist in a years long campaign and I heavily agree that the spellcasting is amazing and just makes D&D spellcasting feel boring in comparison.
I adore Swords and Wizardry. I moved over to the system from 5th edition D&D and honestly, I don't think I'll ever go back.
The freedom is given me as a DM, as well as my players is really special. I like how modular it is too, the fact that I can use any OSR books with little to no effort is a bonus.
On top of that, S&W showed me that there is more to TTRPG's than Dungeons and Dragons. If it wasn't for Swords and Wizardry, I wouldn't have tried over game systems.
Oh that takes me back, I should still have my near-complete set of Earthdawn 1st edition rulebooks in the basement.
Absolutely fantastic world. And a fairly intelligent system overall, as you say. I think me and my school friends played it on and off for... 10 years or so? Until we had mostly moved apart and it became a bit of an issue to keep going.
My first TTRPG was Vampire: the Masquerade. I didn't have a chance to play it much, but the Storytelling system was really neat to me. I am more of a fan of the Storyteller system from the Chronicles of Darkness line these days, though. It's a little easier to play with characters from different splats, and while I still generally hate combat, it's a lot easier for me in CoD.
My favorite VtM character was a cult leader who used her cult as herd. Until the entire herd got wiped out and she became laser-focused.
My most extensive recent TTRPG experience has been in Exalted 3e, and I love Storyteller (and Exalted specifically). I feel like it really lets me express a character through the mechanics, which as someone who definitely finds the characterization part as the hard part, is very welcome
There was a discussion a while ago that was similar, for reference: What's your not-D&D RPG, and why?. To be clear, I'm not saying not to post this, just saying that there are some interesting answers there for reference. I'll copy what I said there, as my answer has not changed, though I have just squashed two top level comments there together.
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 nationalitiesfactions. 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 recallVampire: 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:
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].
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.
The Quiet Year
I've got another one that doesn't really fit with the others I posted, so I made a whole separate comment. I've played this one.
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.
Oh man The Quiet Year is great. if OP wants a good actual play of it, Friends At The Table used it to begin their Marielda arc
I loved the 7th Sea RPG and so did the players. For some reason they all roleplayed a lot more than with other systems. Something in the setting stimulates the need to make quips and dramatic statements while cleaving your way through dozens of underlings.
Delta Green is my favorite system right now, and I'd recommend it to anybody who is interested in the narrative possibilities of tabletop games. I stumbled upon Delta Green last year while looking for a system to run a campaign in the SCP universe, but I ended up ditching that idea in favor of simply running Delta Green modules.
Delta Green is set in the modern era. Incomprehensible horrors lurk just beyond the veil of this reality and threaten to wreak havoc on humanity. Players are expendable "Agents" who, for their own reasons, have each taken on the thankless responsibility of neutralizing and concealing unnatural incursions. The Agents are assigned to these operations by a shadowy conspiracy.
Each Delta Green module is typically one such operation. These modules are very evocatively written; NPC characters are fleshed out, and the scenarios themselves are compelling variations on the ever-present theme of cosmic horror. I also really like the faux-"dossier" aesthetic used by the Delta Green books - overall, the presentation punches way above its weight class and is on par with D&D.
Each Agent has a Sanity score, which inevitably erodes as they are exposed to the unnatural. To preserve their Sanity, Agents have to make interesting choices that also have narrative consequences. For instance, instead of losing Sanity points, an Agent can project that damage onto a close relationship, harming that relationship but preserving their own Sanity.
Need To Know (Delta Green's equivalent to D&D's Starter Kit) is freely available here and includes a short module, "Last Things Last," which is generally viewed as the best possible introduction to the game. For an actual play of Delta Green, I'd recommend Get In The Trunk.
I've been a DeltaGreen handler for almost a year now thanks to Get in the Trunk after never having run any game system before. It is like nothing else I have ever played in its gameplay, themes, simplicity, detail, and fun factor. I have gotten lost in the lore of the world like no other game. I would also highly recommend people give this awesome game a try.
Blades in the Dark. I love its slightly crunchier take on PbtA style games and the low prep. I've only played a handful of sessions with it though, and I have heard that longer form campaigns don't do well in the system as character scaling isn't amazing in the system.
In general though, the low prep systems are amazing. For example, you dont "plan" things, you just GO. If you run into an obstacle that you would have planned for, you can have a flashback where you did plan for it (at the cost of stress). Similarly, you only choose the bulk of your inventory before setting out (low/medium/high) which dictates your general level of stealthiness/blend-in-ability. Once you are there, whenever you need something, you just check it off because clearly you thought ahead to bring it (until you are full up on bulk).
It just takes away so many of the things that slow a game down and all you are left with is the die rolling fun!
I was going to say Blades in the Dark too.
I like that the system encourages role playing too. You get XP based on whether you've roleplayed certain aspects to the character. I also like that the consequences of pushing your characters too hard are inbuilt into the system. Basically gaining a trauma, and having indulge in a vice to bring your stress down.
Anything by John Battle particularly .dungeon and the one about space pirates/Firefly vibes, the name escapes me. Batts just has such a creative mind, makes clear and malleable rules that are simultaneously beginner friendly and fun for advanced players, and always included cool art/stories to go along with the systems.
The other much more popular ttrpg I like is Dialect. It's beautiful and incredibly fun and moving. You work together to create the language and history of a community and as the world changes so does the language.
Thank you for bringing Dialect to my attention! I must track down a copy. The Venn diagram of tabletop gamers and armchair linguists in my social circle is ... well, 3-5 suggested players.
My favorite TTRPG, period. Stars Without Number. Kevin Crawford made an amazing game (then he did it again with Worlds Without Number, but I digress.) Skill checks are done with 2D6 (or if sufficiently talented, the best 2D6 out of a dice pool), combat is D20. Combat is, by default, pretty lethal, so the game RAW wants you to use your brain.
Podcasts? I've only found two, but man, are they good. There's 7th Star To The Right, which is about a group of psychics and a robot going on adventures in space. But the most well known would be Astronomica, which is about a bunch of non-psychics and a robot going on adventures in space.
I've heard about this one here and there and there seems to be consensus that it's pretty amazing. I'll have to look more into it and see how it compares to DnD, especially Worlds Without Number which might be easier to get my group into since they aren't big into scifi sadly
Are there premade adventure modules?
There are! However, the game's biggest selling point is it's a sandbox game, meaning that the preferred-by-many method of play is the "pick a star and go" type. But as with just about any TTRPG, there's no wrong way to play it.
I started listening to 7th star on the left, and it's pretty hilarious. Big fan
It absolutely is. The cast has great chemistry, and the gameplay and storytelling are both engaging. Glad you're enjoying it!
Tales from the Loop, Alien, 7 Seas 2.0, Delta Green, and Eclipse Phase.
Fate Core.
Story agnostic system that is for heavy RP/writer/theater need types.
To expand on this, FATE (online version here) is a system that is used to build actual roleplaying systems, basically. Or rather it's hypergeneric and hence can be adapted/specialized into ~anything.
Space mecha combat? Sure!
The Dresden Files RPG, wizards in modern cities? Of course!
Magical cats protecting their burdens (humans) against evil demons from the other side? Easy!
The RPG re-enactment of The Rookie? Do it!
As /u/oliak says, the key here is that it's incredibly RP/storytelling-centric. So much so that I'd call it more of a collaborative story-telling experience than what people usually assume to be a tabletop RPG, it sits on the opposite ned of the dungeongrinder games. Even combat is more about describing interesting moment-to-moment thrills than defeating somebody, owing to the central system: Aspects and Invoking Aspects.
In FATE-derived games, everything has aspects. Or is an aspect. For example, going back to the magical cats - a pre-made scenario called The Secrets of Cats - each guardian cat has 5 aspects:
Now, during ... about anything, really, you can spend a "fate point" to invoke an aspect. This essentially allows you to overrule the gamemaster, and say "But wait, X is my burden and he's a firefighter. He's being called to this emergency, and I hear the call through his radio. I sneak out with him and jump into his car to ride along, that's how I can be at the scene early!". Like I said, collaborative storytelling.
How do you get fate points? You could mess with somebody in your groups, invoking their aspects against them. Give them a fate point. More commonly, the GM will do this. You might describe that your cat wants to cast a spell, but akshually because your high concept is "Protector of Justice", you cannot assume someone is guilty, and using their true name that they told you privately in trust against them to track them would go against what you stand for, you won't do that. Here, have a fate point!
It's an incredibly versatile system, what I mention there is already highly specific. I should note that much of the beauty comes not only from the collaborative storytelling, but also from the collaborative worldbuilding. Character creation should always be a joint session, deciding on aspects of the world and place you play in. Likewise, adapting some pre-made scenario to your own needs or even making one from scratch is an amazing experience once you've played a few times.
And if you find the rules too heavy-handed with their focus on self-created content (to be fair they're small A5 books!) you can always go for FATE accelerated, a version more optimized for short stints and one-shots.
Warhammer Fantasy (1st and 2nd edition), Cyberpunk 2020, Traveller (Mangoose), Delta Green.
Warhammer Fantasy - Blackadder-esque world that sometimes dips into Lovecraft. What's not to love?
Cyberpunk 2020 - Outside the usual allure of cyberpunk as a genre, It's one of few games that really (i.e. mechanically) rewards being aggressive in combat. It's also almost impossible to make a non-viable character.
Traveller - A superb game that offers almost too many options of playing. Both in tone and in execution, from Star Trek to Futurama, you can make it work if everyone in the group is on board.
Delta Green - You're a cell of federal agents formed as an extra-governmental conspiracy to keep Lovecraftian mythos at bay a while longer. Think Call of Cthulhu, but player characters are somewhat aware of what's up and have a good reason to work together from the beginning. I prefer the '90s edition because it feels more like X-Files than MIB, but both are fun.
I love that so many people mentioned Earthdawn, but despite many fun memories, it's not my favourite.
Delta Green getting a lot of love in this thread, need to check that out.
I've also heard of traveller but long long ago, and honestly it sounds like my ideal TTRPG... But as you said getting everyone on board is crucial
Regarding Traveller, it's perfectly fine for theme to evolve and change with the game's goings-on. Your group can travel to a very different part of the galaxy (par for the course) or lose their stuff (happens, from piracy to losing an ill-conceived bet) and this can put you in very different circumstances. I had a group go from jaded mercs shafted by life and command to thwarting a narco cartel, and it felt seamless.
Call of Cthulhu - investigation, squishy PC’s, handouts, maps.
We used to play a comedy RPG game called Hunter Planet in between larger games. Iirc, players were alien tourists coming to Earth (Dirt I think it was called) to hunt humans as game. Hilarity ensues :)
Heroes Unlimited/TMNT/Rifts - it was our game of choice back in high school and university (90’s) when we weren’t playing DND.
Open Legend RPG and I've really enjoyed Alien RPG.
I'm a big fan of Cyberpunk RED, if just for the free monthly mini-expansions they do every month. It balances the brutality you expect from a Cyberpunk system with the approachability of modern D&D. Pondsmith really knows what he's doing.
I so want to get in on this game. I have this idea for a killer who's been so extensively cybered that with her fake plastic skin, she looks like a psycho Barbie doll.
Anima RPG
It's a nutty as heck anime-inspired RPG originally published in Spain, then translated into English for international release. It's based on the Hackmaster system, so everything is d100 or d10 based, but the standardization of the mechanics (everything is an opposed roll, flat check, or roll-under) means that the game can have 4 different systems (Magic, Ki, Psionics, and Summoning) that can be modularly included to make whatever kind of anime-inspired game you want to make. Dragonball Z? Ki. Yu Yu Hakusho? Ki and a little Summoning. Fire Force? Psionic pyromancy.
Trying to play in the system is super frontloaded, and making a character is super complicated using a point-buy system for all abilities, but actual play is decently streamlined.
Ain't no one talked GURPS yet and that's a shame. It has rules for basically any setting you want - high fantasy, sci fi, modern, your weird custom setting, you name it. Build a character with basically any power set you like. No rolling stats up - you basically purchase your character using a set amount of points, some for stats, some for skills, and some for advantages and disadvantages. Systems are relatively simple, most actions involving just one kind of roll. If you want more I highly recommend Chris Normand's videos on the subject on YouTube.
A system that I've only played a little but has always been on my mind is Realms Of Pugmire. It's a system where everyone plays as anthropomorphic animals, that were all originally housepets/domesticated animals that were "Uplifted" by their humans into consciousness. The humans are long gone, and hold a mythical status among the pets they left behind, who have now developed into a feudal society.
The whole game and setting really ties together around this theme of playing housepets in a fantasy setting in a fascinating way, such as there being invisible demons called the Unseen, to represent when your animals seemingly see something you don't, or bark at something that isn't there. Relics from the time of humans are hugely powerful, and hold immense value in the new society. Magic is flavored as being just very advanced technology that the animals don't understand. Bits of plastic are the currency, due to its large but not unlimited quantity and availability, and the process of making it has been lost to time.
Different species have different traits and societies. Dogs are firecely loyal and have a main capital with one or two other offshoots, while cats have six or seven seperate monarchies, that scheme and plot against one another. Badgers (and other marsupials I think? This part of the setting is least developed and is up next in their line of books expanding on different parts of the settings) are largely tribal beings, roaming the plains. Lizards are nomadic travelers, rarely seen, while rats and mice live deep under ground, scavenging in the ruins of the old world, in subway tunnels and caverns and the like. There's a sea to the south that has been so wrecked by ecological disasters of the past that it's highly acidic, so plastic hulls coat the sea crafts, and there is still a thriving sea life for pirates and traders and the like.
The setting is really what fascinates me most here, and the system itself is unfortunately a little basic, for lack of a better word. It's partially aimed at beginners and younger players, and the system is very light mechanically, so it's great for building on top of and making it your own, but I like having a fully fleshed out rule set personally. It's also only meant for shorter campaigns, lvl 1-10 type deal, so there isn't quite as much variety in terms of feats and build options. But the setting really triggers a deep fascination in me to the point where I've been considering just homebrewing the system to more what I want or maybe converting the setting to another system.
I haven't played it personally, but I've been really enjoying the newest arc in The Adventure Zone (Steeplechase) in which they're playing Blades in the Dark. The flashback and stress mechanics are great and I'd like to try a few missions using Blades in the Dark with my group some time.
Absolutely loved CthulhuTech when I played it. The setting was a ton of fun (Neon Genesis Evangelion crossed with Lovecraftian horror, what's not to love) and the game play felt good. One drawback is that there are wildly different power levels for the archetypes, so it can be a problem if one person is controlling a mech in combat and another player is just chilling there with a pistol, but you can handle that in a few ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CthulhuTech