Alternatives to Dungeons and Dragons

[brassherald]

I'm not sure if you're aware, but Wizards of the Coast, publisher of D&D's current edition, 5e have had a pretty bad time recently.

They sent pinkertons to a person's house because they sent a magic card too early. Pinkertons are not known for restraint and you read that right, this was a mistake by Wizards which they corrected by sending essentially bounty hunters to a person's house. Add to that the whole issue of their OGL debacle and several things that were racist dog whistles being "accidentally" published and well, I have had a few people tell me they played D&D because of me and I wanted to have a thread for alternatives that do not support a company like this.

Anyway for a first post, let me talk about Cities of Mist. It's not a one to one of D&D but, if like me, you love the noir genre, it's great. All about investigation and finding mysteries as avatars of certain mythical beings trying to find the balance between your regular every day existence and the mystical being inside of you. I have run this a few times for friends and everyone playing really enjoyed it. Plus, I love a good noir story and this gives an excuse to read more noir books and watch more noir films as "research". Win win win, as Michael Scott would say.

Feel free to chime in with alternatives you all might like I'm certainly going to take my time getting through the ones I've researched.

[Ythan]

GURPS, the Generic Universal Role-Playing System, is cool. It's adaptable to any kind of game you might want to run and probably already has the details worked out for you in a supplement somewhere.

[brassherald]

Going to be recommending a game that is heavily based on Fifth Edition but is in a great universe and just a Google search away for anyone.

SW5e is a heavily modified 5e system set in the Star Wars Universe. Two things here that really help it in my eyes are 1) it's Star Wars that I can get my group of friends to play and 2) there are so many choices for subclasses and they never seem to stop, unlike D&D which hit about 5-7 on most classes and then decided it was enough. The game is basically the same as 5e but with Jedi, smugglers, bounty hunters, sith, etc. Again, the rules are totally free online and it looks like the new owners of the system also wrote another space universe I love, Mass Effect 5e. I cannot comment on that as I have not played or read any of it.

[VashtaNeurotic]

Have played a ton of non DnD systems so here are a few.

The first most obvious alternative is

Pathfinder

which is mostly the same rule set as DnD 3.5e but has a completely different world. I've only played first edition pathfinder which is very customizable but also very crunchy and can give too many options. 2nd Edition came out and is apparently a lot more streamlined, though it's also new so there's fewer resources out there for it.

Another game I've played recently is

Deadlands: Reloaded

which is based off the

Savage Worlds

system which has a ton of settings in the real of alternate history w/ real monsters. The setting of the old west was fun and the system is pretty simple and has support on Roll20. Also, exploding dice (i.e if you roll the highest number you roll another dice) are a major mechanic and are sooooo fun to deal with.

There's also always

Call of Cthulu

though it's very far from normal DnD. Basically you guide your characters through a Lovecraftian mystery and it uses a D100 system for skill checks. Also instead of your characters getting stronger over time, your characters slowly lose sanity and luck, which vastly increases the odds of character death. The rules are also relatively easy to pick up so long as you read the rulebook, sometimes even easier than DnD with skill checks since there's only 3 levels of success (Normal, Hard and Extreme) and the number you need is just determined by your points in the relevant skill.

A system very few have probably heard of is

Of Dreams and Magic

where is very customizable. The basic premise is magic is real but it's all derived from "dreamers" and dreams. Every time you use magic to solve a problem you increase the chance a monster from one of the dream worlds will enter the real world and cause a huuuge problem. The biggest issue is the rules are a bit harder to wrap your head around and combat is...not great. Definitely a lot better for a mystery based campaign.

I've also played

Monster of the Week

which uses the Powered by the Apocalypse engine and basically allows you play out episodes of Supernatural "Monster of the Week" shows. It's very rules light, but you select your character archetype from the different types of characters in those story (Stuff like "The Chosen One" or "The Spooky") and while the flavoring is all up to you the rules also restrict the type of actions you can do, so a lot of working with the DM is necessary for figuring out what happens/what you can do.

Last but certainly not least is

The One Ring

, a system I can not speak highly enough of. As you might guess, it's a campaign set in Middle Earth in the world of Tolkien. If you like LOTR you will like this game. You can play as a lot of different races from LOTR and more material is coming out. I believe my group is playing second edition, which is relatively new but does seem to have plenty of support in terms of being able to run it (all of the games I've mentioned my group has played on Roll20 btw, great website for this). Also while the skill system is quite different from DnD, it's not that hard to figure out, since once again the DC is determined by your character sheet, though the DM can make things harder by letting you roll fewer dice/roll with disadvantage. It also focuses a lot on travel time (cause Tolkien) and Shadow is a major mechanic where your character can just, turn evil if you aren't careful. It's really amazing.

[AniX]

I really enjoyed

Lancer

when I played it, a good mix of flavor and crunch. Anyone who enjoyed Gundam or other mech anime/games would really get into it, it has a lot of options for customization of both pilot and mech without feeling overwhelming.

I also LOVE

FATE

but it definitely is more "I want to tell a cooperative story and sometimes solve matters of chance with dice" than any sort of game where you can optimize builds.

[Silverclaw]

The first most obvious alternative is Pathfinder which is mostly the same rule set as DnD 3.5e but has a completely different world. I've only played first edition pathfinder which is very customizable but also very crunchy and can give too many options. 2nd Edition came out and is apparently a lot more streamlined, though it's also new so there's fewer resources out there for it.

I will say that 2e probably (no, almost definitely) has as many options as 5e does already, and is closer to the 5e experience than 1e ever will be

[gob]

Weebs & Warriors