You’ve been playing D&D 5^th Edition for awhile now and you’re starting to wonder what other roleplaying games are out there. Is there something you’d like better? Maybe you have a favorite genre — space opera, horror, detective fiction — and it’s not fantasy. Or maybe you just want a break.

Or maybe not. I’ve been playing D&D for thirty years. It’s a game of infinite possibility.

But if you are thinking about trying a new RPG, here are some options I think you should check out.

5th EDITION: IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT

“I’ve only played D&D 5^th Edition, it’s not quite right for me, and I’d like to try something different.”

1974 D&D: The original version of D&D created by Dave Arneson & Gary Gygax. This is the opposite end of the spectrum from 5^th Edition. This may not be what you’re looking for, but it will tell you a lot about whether you should be looking at other editions of D&D. I’ve done a video series taking a closer look at this edition and how it plays at the table.

Pathfinder (Jason Buhlmahn): The 1^st Edition of Pathfinder derives from the 3^rd Edition of D&D and the current 2^nd Edition heavily revises that into a more streamlined, tightly designed package. Either or both will tell you everything else you need to know about checking out other editions of D&D.

Shadow of the Demon Lord (Robert J. Schwalb): From one of the major designers during D&D 4^th Edition, Shadow of the Demon Lord is a good example of where the concepts of D&D can be taken when designers are given the freedom to reinvent them.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (Sean Punch): Based on the GURPS universal RPG system, Dungeon Fantasy is for the simulationists and the extreme character customizers.

The One Ring (Francesco Nepitello & Marco Maggi): Set in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, this one is for the narrativists and those interested in an earthier fantasy. Also focused on epic journeys.

Blades in the Dark (John Harper): Everybody gets to play a rogue! Also introduces org-based play as the group builds a criminal crew together.

Ars Magica (Jonathan Tweet & Mark Rein•Hagen): Everybody gets to play a wizard! Also introduces org-based play as the group builds a covenant together.

Burning Wheel (Luke Crane): Maybe you’d like a storytelling game! With Burning Wheel you’re really only dipping your toe in that end of the pool, but it’ll open the door for you.

WHAT ELSE IS OUT THERE?

“I’ve only played D&D, but I want to see what other sorts of games are out there.”

Some of the games listed below are repeated from the list above.

Numenera (Monte Cook): A science-fantasy game seting one billion years in the future. Earth has seen eight mega-civilizations rise and fall, and a neo-Renaissance now picks through the ruins, rediscovering what was lost.

Ars Magica (Jonathan Tweet & Mark Rein•Hagen): Everybody plays the wizard! Your powerful magi have banded together to found a covenant in Mythic Europe, a fantasy version the 13^th century.

Pendragon (Greg Stafford): Step into the legends of King Arthur, playing knights of Camelot in a campaign designed to span decades.

Technoir (Jeremy Keller): A cyberpunk game with a radically inventive game system in which you change the world by using verbs to push adjectives. Also features conspiracy-driven plot-mapping.

Blades in the Dark (John Harper): Everybody plays the rogue! The players craft not only their characters, but also the criminal crew they all belong to. Features mechanics specialized for carrying out heists and other scores that are tightly integrated with downtime development of the crew.

Night’s Black Agents (Kenneth Hite): A vampire spy thriller, in which retired secret agents discover that vampires are real. After creating your own unique vampire variant, very creative tools like the Conspyramid empower the GM to run a vast, global conspiracy.

Eclipse Phase (Rob Boyle & Brian Cross): A transhuman kitchen sink space opera set 10 years after the Fall of Earth. With elements ripped from the pages of cutting edge science fiction, Eclipse Phase is a multitude of games in one.

Call of Cthulhu (Sandy Petersen): Based on the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, the players take on the roles of investigators seeking to unravel eldritch mysteries.

You might also enjoy these storytelling games, which are tabletop narrative games similar to roleplaying games, but distinctly different (and not all of which even have a GM):

The Quiet Year (Avery Alder): A map-based storytelling game in which the players collaboratively create a post-apocalyptic civilization using prompts generated from a deck of playing cards.

Microscope (Ben Robbins): Explore an epic history entirely of your own making, using the rules of the game to build an ever-expanding, non-linear chronology.

Shock: Social Science Fiction (Joshua A.C. Newman): A game intensely focused on the speculative in speculative fiction, in which each player takes on the role of both their Protagonist and also the Antagonist for the player sitting to their right.

Ten Candles (Stephen Dewey): Ten days ago, the sun went out. And then They came. The survivors have learned to stay in the light. You play this game by candlelight, snuffing one of the ten candles at the end of each scene… until the last candle goes out.

MY GAMES

“I’ve only played D&D, I want to try something new, and Justin’s a shill.”

These are all games I’ve created, co-created, or oversee as either the RPG Developer at Atlas Games or publisher at Dream Machine Productions.

Ars Magica (Jonathan Tweet & Mark Rein•Hagen): The only game to make all three lists!

Technoir (Jeremy Keller): A cyberpunk game with a radically inventive game system in which you change the world by using verbs to push adjectives. Also features conspiracy-driven plot-mapping.

Magical Kitties Save the Day (Matthew J. Hanson, Justin Alexander, Michelle Nephew): Every kitty has a magical power, every kitty has a human, and every human has a problem. The magical kitties have to use their powers to solve the humans’ problems! (Warning: Problems may include witches, alien invasions, and hyper-intelligent raccoons.) This game is designed for first-time roleplayers and first-time GMs, including an introductory graphic novel adventure that lets you start playing within minutes of opening the box and a plethora of guides for running your first game.

Legends & Labyrinths (Justin Alexander): A version of 3^rd Edition which strips the game down to its simplest core. Designed to be 100% compatible with 3^rd Edition, however, allowing you to not only use any adventure material designed for the game, but to also bolt on any and all advanced options you’d like to have in your game.

Infinity (Justin Alexander): A space opera kitchen sink based on the Infinity miniatures game from Corvus Belli. Notably includes a three-part conflict resolution engine with fully integrated Warfare, Psywar, and Infowar systems.

Feng Shui (Robin D. Laws): The Hong Kong action film roleplaying game! Laws has created an ingenious setting allowing him to wed historical, modern, and science fiction settings into a single experience for your PCs, while the innovative combat system allows you to capture the high-octane fights from your favorite action movies.

Over the Edge (Jonathan Tweet): The Ultimate Democratic Republic of Al Amarja welcomes you. During your stay with us please remember that Liberty is Job One, Disarmament Means Peace, It’s Polite to Speak English, and, of course, Paranormal Activity is Perfectly Legal. Thank you for your consent. (Make sure to check out my adventure in the Welcome to the Island anthology.)

Unknown Armies (Greg Stolze & John Tynes): An occult horror RPG about broken people trying to fix an equally broken world.

Go to Part 1

We’re nearing the end of a campaign, having traced a gaggle of strange incidents in which historical events (or at least replicas of historical events) have erupted into the modern world back to an eery city on the border of the Dreamlands. As we explore the city, we discover that it seems to be somewhere between a palimpsest and a jigsaw puzzle, formed from jagged pieces of different cities around the world and drawn from different eras in history (not all of them apparently our history). The whole place is completely deserted, however, and a strange white mist drifts through the streets.

While we’re checking out the apartment that once belonged to one of the PCs, there’s a car crash outside. Rushing out into the street, we see a girl with stark white hair racing away from the accident. We recognize her: Although she had black hair last time we saw her, she was being kidnapped by some of the strange wraith-cultists who seem to be mixed up in (or maybe causing?) all of this weird stuff.

We give chase and she leads us to the British National Museum (or a copy of the British National Museum?), but then she runs into the room with the Parthenon Marbles and vanishes. Our archaeologist notes that the marble sculptures have been altered and appear to depict a map of the city. We take a rubbing and begin using the map to navigate, visiting a number of strange locations where we experience enigmatic things.

Then, abruptly, a bright white light suffuses everything.

And the world ends.

Huh.

In the post mortem, we discovered what happened: After the car crash, we were supposed to check the trunk of the car. If we’d done that, we would have found the girl — still with black hair — tied up in the back. She would have been able to lead us back to the Home Insurance Building (the world’s first skyscraper) and then… something something something. I don’t remember the details. The cities of the world had all been linked together in a ritual using key skyscrapers and the Girl With White Hair was the black-haired prodigy’s mirror-self from an anti-life dimension.

We didn’t check the trunk, though, and so the world ended.

“It was really exciting to run a sandbox!” the GM said.

THE RAILROADER’S FALLACY

The railroader’s fallacy is surprisingly common:

I ran a sandbox, but the players didn’t follow the one plot that was available!

This often results in the railroader saying things like, “Sandboxes don’t work.”

First, let’s understand the nature of the fallacy here.

A sandbox campaign is one in which the players can either choose or define what the next scenario is going to be. In other words, the experience of a sandbox is more or less defined by a multitude of scenarios. So as soon as you see someone use “sandbox” to describe a campaign in which there was only one scenario — or, even more absurdly, only one plot — it’s immediately obvious that something has gone horribly wrong.

So how does this happen? And why does it seem to happen so often?

Well, we need to start with the railroader. Checking out The Railroading Manifesto might be useful if you’re not familiar with it, but the short is that:

Railroads happen when the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome.

Railroading can happen for a lot of reasons, but a common one is that the railroader lacks the tools to build RPG scenarios and therefore defaults to the linear plots they see in videos, movies, books, graphic novels, and so forth. This linear sequence of predetermined outcomes is antithetical to the interactivity of an RPG, and so the GM has no choice but to railroad their players into the predetermined outcomes.

At some point, the railroader gets the message that Railroads Are Bad™. The ideal outcome would be that they learn some scenario structures and gain the tools they need to run dynamic, awesome scenarios. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen.

One common response is rejection of the premise: “I railroad. Railroading is bad. I don’t want to be bad. Therefore railroading isn’t bad.” (Which is, of course, a completely different fallacy.)

But the other possibility is that they hear about sandbox campaigns. They probably erroneously believe that sandboxes are the opposite of railroads. (They’re not.) But they definitely hear that, “In a sandbox, you can do anything!”

And they think to themselves, “Let the players do anything? I can do that!”

Unfortunately, they still don’t have the tools to prep anything other than a linear plot. So what do they prep?

A linear plot requiring a predetermined sequence of specific choices and outcomes.

The only difference is that the players can now “do anything” (sic), so the GM no longer forces the required choices and outcomes. In the most malignant form of the fallacy, they won’t even signpost the choices.

The end of the world is actually fairly dramatic as an outcome. It’s far more common for the players to miss one of these blind turns and just… discover there’s nothing to do. There is, after all, only the one plot; the one path. Leave the path and there’s simply nothing there: You can try to engage with characters or go to interesting places, but nothing happens. You can “do anything,” but nothing you do results in anything happening because the only thing that matters is still the GM’s plot.

“Sandboxes don’t work.”

THE SOLUTION

The solution, obviously, is: Don’t do that.

If you’re going to move away from railroading (and you absolutely should), then you need to actually abandon that broken structure, not just pretend it’s not there. Check out Game Structures and the Scenario Structure Challenge to start exploring fully functional structures for your adventure design.

For more insight on how the scenario selection/creation dynamic at the heart of a sandbox campaign works, check out Advanced Gamemastery: Running the Sandbox. You might also find the extended practical example given in Icewind Dale: Running the Sandbox enlightening.

ADDENDUM

This post has been live for a couple of days, and I want to clear up a point of confusion:

The scenario described at the beginning of the essay is not a railroad. If it was a railroad, the GM would have enforced a preconceived outcome.

The scenario described at the beginning of the essay is what happens when a railroader preps a scenario that requires railroading to work (because that’s the only thing they know how to prep), but then doesn’t railroad.

This is why I’ve said that railroading is a broken technique attempting to fix a broken scenario.

The fallacy is believing that non-broken scenarios are impossible (or bad or impractical) because your broken scenario doesn’t work.

Go to Part 16: Don’t Write Down Initiative

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 32B: Shaped by Venom

A beam of scintillating energy shot out from a second door – only slightly cracked – and struck the barbarian in the chest, paralyzing him completely. Agnarr was completely defenseless as one of the thralls thrust its lance-like claw through his chin and up into his skull, killing him instantly.

Oh no! Agnarr! I can’t believe this! How will his death reshape the campaign? What will be the emotional fallout? What new character will his player create?

With the entryway cleared, Dominic came around the corner, looked at Agnarr’s grievous wound, and sighed heavily.

(…)

As Tee came back inside, she saw that Agnarr was shaking his head gingerly – Dominic had resealed the bond between his soul and body.

Oh. Never mind.

For the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, and other 3^rd Edition games, I used a set of house rules for death and dying designed to narratively smooth out the “you’re dead, you’re back, you’re dead, you’re back, you’re dead” up-and-down cycle that can emerge in D&D, but it’s nevertheless true that once you start hitting the upper range of what we’d now call Tier 2 the PCs’ relationship to death shifts.

Raise dead really is a game changer.

This used to be less true. In AD&D, for example, a character could only be returned to life with raise dead or resurrection effects a number of times equal to their Constitution score. (This could eventually be surpassed with a wish spell, but obviously only at a much later point in the campaign.)

(At least in theory. The fact that 3^rd Edition began eliminating such consequences because they weren’t fun is largely because a wide swath of people were already ignoring them because they weren’t fun. But I digress.)

Regardless, most D&D protagonists will reach a point where their relationship is largely unique in storytelling. Superheroes often experience a revolving door of death, but it’s rarely seen that way by the character except for comical asides or fourth-wall breaks. Video games will have stuff like phoenix down that will “revive” companions who are “dead,” but this is usually ludonarrative dissonance with these games nevertheless featuring actual death in their cutscenes.

The same sort of ludonarrative dissonance — a disconnect between the story of the game and the mechanics of the game — is something that will often crop up in D&D campaigns: You instinctively want death to have the same meaning that it does in stories or real life, but the reality is that it doesn’t. Dominic’s reaction to seeing Agnarr’s impaled corpse may be distress, but it really shouldn’t be the same emotional reaction that someone in the real world seeing their companion’s corpse would have. Because the reality Dominic and Agnarr are living in is just fundamentally not the same.

And, in my opinion, that’s OK. It’s fascinating, even.

I think there’s kind of two ways to deal with this.

First, you can try to treat death in a mid- or high-level D&D game as if it were emotionally and factually the same as death in the real world. If you take this approach, though, I think you’ll be best served if you actually house rule the game to match the vision of what you want (and sustain ludonarrative harmony). That would mean getting rid of spells like raise dead, and if you do that, you’ll probably also want to modify the mechanics around dying, your scenario design, or both.

Second, lean into it. Death doesn’t have the same meaning. So what meaning DOES it have, both emotionally and factually? And what are the unique stories that you can tell with that meaning?

A sentiment I often see in a variety of places (discussions of prequel movies, for example) is that if a character can’t die, then there’s nothing at stake. This can be a particularly alluring belief when it comes to a D&D because, other than the outcomes of specific die rolls, death IS the only mechanically defined thing at stake in the game.

But it’s not really true, of course, because the experience of playing D&D is much more than just the sum of its mechanics. And, particularly in fiction, life-or-death is often the least interesting thing at stake.

Campaign Journal: Session 32C – Running the Campaign: Non-Combat Goals
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 32B: SHAPED BY VENOM

December 20th, 2008
The 18th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

ENTER THE CULTIST

Tee, who had taken up a position at the top of the staircase to serve as a look-out, heard a door open below. She snuck down the stairs and looked down the central hall on the first level… just in time to see someone disappear around the far corner of the hall into the front entryway.

Signaling silently to the others above to follow her, Tee made her own way down the hall. Agnarr, oblivious to all of this, continued poking around through the largely deserted complex of rooms he’d dropped into.

Tee peeked around the corner into the entryway: One of the doors on the northern side of the room was slightly ajar. She took a few moments to consider her options while the others crept down the hall behind.

But before she could reach a decision, Agnarr finished exploring the rooms he was in and emerged – loudly – into the entryway through a different door.

As he did so, the slightly ajar door burst open and two venom-shaped thralls charged through. Agnarr took half a step back and drew his sword to defend himself—

But at that moment, a beam of scintillating energy shot out from a second door – only slightly cracked – and struck the barbarian in the chest, paralyzing him completely. Agnarr was completely defenseless as one of the thralls thrust its lance-like claw through his chin and up into his skull, killing him instantly.

Ranthir – seeing Agnarr fall – threw a fireball into the entryway. It exploded spectacularly. Tee seized the opportunity to tumble past the two large thralls. Bursting through the door from which the beam of energy had come, she saw the spellcasting cultist backing away. With a single bounding leap she was on him, viciously cutting him across the chest.

The cultist fumbled a potion of healing to his lips and raised his other hand to cast a spell – but then his eyes grew suddenly large as a cocoon behind Tee suddenly belched forth a swarm of chaos beetles.

Tee ducked back out of the room and slammed the door shut. The last thing she saw were the beetles sweeping over the cultist, biting and stinging at him repeatedly.

Tor, meanwhile, had led the charge against the two venom-shaped thralls. They had been badly injured by Ranthir’s fire ball, and Tor was making short work of them.

With the entryway cleared, Dominic came around the corner, looked at Agnarr’s grievous wound, and sighed heavily.

EXIT THE CULTIST

As the last thrall dropped and Dominic knelt by Agnarr’s side, however, the sound of breaking glass came from the room Tee had left the spellcaster in.

“He’s jumped out the window!”

Tor and Ranthir rushed outside into the street. A moment later, the cultist came stumbling out of the alley, a vicious cut on his arm sending blood streaming down his arm. Seeing them he spat. “Chaos shall eat your hearts!”

The cultist raised his hands to cast a spell… and Ranthir undid the casting before it had even begun.

Tee came through the door, dropped her sword, and drew her bow.

The cultist yelped and turned to run, but Tor chased him down and tackled him to the cobblestones. Getting his arms wrapped around the cultist’s neck, he began to choke the life out of him.

Tee, glancing at the stares they were receiving from the others in the street, quickly trotted back inside – collecting her weapons as she went: They were going to have to hurry.

“The Brotherhood… will…. never…” The cultist slipped into unconsciousness. Tor grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back inside.

SHAPED BY VENOM

As Tee came back inside, she saw that Agnarr was shaking his head gingerly – Dominic had resealed the bond between his soul and body. She moved past them, performing a quick sweep of the rest of the apartment’s building’s lower level.

There were a few more nests and cocoons, along with some patches of the dangerous violet slime, but there were only two points of true interest: First, a small room near the back of the building where the floorboards had been broken from below. A ladder leaned against the side of this hole and the smell of raw sewage drafted up from below.

Second, a locked door.

By this time, Tor had dragged the unconscious cultist back into the entryway.

“The watch will be here soon,” Elestra said.

“Yes,” Tee said, coming back from her sweep. “We should move quickly.”

“Where are we going?” Dominic asked.

“Down the hole.”

But first they wanted to find out what was behind the locked door.

With Agnarr backing her up, Tee easily picked the cheap lock on the apartment door. Swinging it open revealed a room cluttered with various papers and alchemical equipment. Near the middle of the room there was a large, wooden table that had been outfitted with crude shackles. Strange stains dotted and pitted the surface of the table.

Of more immediate concern, of course, was the venom-shaped thrall crouched low before the door on the opposite side of the room. With his demesne disturbed, the thrall attacked.

Agnarr shoved Tee out of the way and faced off against it. Under the brunt of the creature’s assault, he was pushed back against the far wall of the hall, but then the vicious thrust of his counter-attack skewered it.

Running the Campaign: Death at Tier 2  – Campaign Journal: Session 32C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

One is always tempted to write something like, “This is the perfect D&D movie.”

But such a statement almost immediately raises the question: What would the perfect D&D movie look like? Would it be a Temple of Elemental Evil dungeon crawler? The gothic horror of Castle Ravenloft? The epic fantasy of the Dragonlance Saga? An isekai like the animated series? A remake of Cube in the Tomb of Horrors?

So let us instead say that this is a perfect D&D movie.

Normally when I review films, I try to avoid discussing anything in detail after the first fifteen minutes without a spoiler warning. But Honor Among Thieves challenges that policy because the first fifteen minutes is so packed with action, character development, and insanely clever narrative layering that it feels a bit unfair to you to lay it bare. (If you’re not completely onboard with the film by the end of the first fifteen minutes, then you’re probably going to be in for a rough ride.) So I’m just going to mention a few key points and then we’ll head into spoiler territory:

• This movie feels like playing in a truly great D&D campaign in the best possible way.
• Daley & Goldstein, along with co-writer Michael Gilio, have crammed a truly insane amount of D&D lore into this film, and not once does it feel forced or self-indulgent.
• It’s simply a joyful experience, but also one that has a legitimate emotional core. I legitimately teared up at the end, because the film had been so successful at getting me invested in its characters.

If you are any sort of D&D fan — or even if you just enjoy fun fantasy films — then you owe it to yourself to go see this movie.

SPOILER WARNING!

Honestly, I think the scene that best captures what this film is about is the speak with dead sequence: The heroes need to learn what happened on a battlefield a few hundred years ago, and so they start digging up corpses.

The scene starts with Holga, the barbarian played by Michelle Rodriguez, talking about how she always dreamed she would be buried in holy ground like this. The emotional beat lands, in large part because it flows directly out of the previous scene, and also serves to pivot us into the first speak with dead:

Simon: I read this incantation. Once the dead man is revived, we can ask him five questions, at which point he will die again, never to return.

(…)

Edgin: Here we go. Were you killed in the Battle of the Evermoors?

Corpse: Yes.

Edgin: Four more questions, right?

Corpse: Yes.

Edgin: No, that one wasn’t for you. Did that count?

Corpse: Yes.

Edgin: Dammit. Only answer when I talk to you, OK?

Corpse: Yes.

Simon: Why would you say “okay” at the end of that sentence?

Corpse: I didn’t.

(The corpse dies.)

This isn’t the best scene in the movie. (It would be hard to pick one. There are so many great scenes in this film.) But it showecases everything the film does well:

It is constantly developing characters, which is what allows it to have four fully developed character arcs plus another three or four vividly realized members of the supporting cast.

It achieves that wild blend of irreverent comedy, monstrous horror, and heartfelt epic that characterize many of the finest D&D campaigns.

It does a simply brilliant job of capturing iconic moments from the game table and putting them onscreen in a way that honors and celebrates them, while also making them completely accessible and fun and thrilling even if you’ve never played a session of D&D in your entire life.

“But she turns into an owlbear, Justin! I’ve seen the trailer! That’s clearly not allowed by the rules!”

Okay, first: Get the fuck out. You don’t deserve nice things.

And second: Yeah, that’s fucking right. The movie even has house rules. How could it be an authentic representation of D&D if it didn’t?

It even manages to somehow feature an honest-to-gods GMPC (played by Regé-Jean Page) for a dozen or so scenes.

My one and only real critique of the film is that I would’ve liked it to have been daring enough (or, at least, empowered enough) to actually shake up the status quo in the Forgotten Realms. Instead, everything needs to be more or less tucked back where it belongs at the end of the film. (On the other hand, I guess I’m also glad D&D’s lore is still being driven by the RPG and not by the feature film.)

In any case, I’ll be heading back to the theater to see it again next week, which will make it the first film I’ve seen twice in theaters since the pandemic started. I don’t think I can really give it a better recommendation than that.

GRADE: B+

A guide to grades at the Alexandrian.