You’ve been playing D&D 5th 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 5th 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 5th 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 1st Edition of Pathfinder derives from the 3rd Edition of D&D and the current 2nd 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 4th 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 13th 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 3rd Edition which strips the game down to its simplest core. Designed to be 100% compatible with 3rd 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.
Thanks for the info!
Do any of these games stand out to you as having a robust library of published campaigns for tired old GMs like myself?
What are you using for your definition of simulationist and narrativist? I’ve observed a lot of people try to use those terms before, and they’re almost never consistent between each other, let alone with Ron Edwards when he popularized their use.
Wondering if Runequest (/HeroQuest/Glorantha) is an intentional omission from your list? It definitely belongs under the “What else is out there” heading.
As a GURPS fan running Dungeon Fantasy right now, I appreciate the love. Note there are two incredibly similar products, the Dungeon Fantasy line for GURPS, and the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, which is the boxed set. You can kit bash the two like we all did with D&D and AD&D back in the 1980s.
But that’s not what prompted my comment. I mean, sci-fi! While I could mention GURPS again (like I just did), I’ll go out and mention the daddy of all sci-fi RPGs, Traveller. Traveller character creation is a game unto itself, no GM needed, and about half of your characters won’t make it to the stage where they’ll need a GM since they’re already dead. And the game is pretty darn good, too.
@James
If you’re looking for a D&D-like experience with good published modules and campaigns, Pathfinder 2e is worth a look (First Edition is also good, but I think Second Edition managed to shed a lot of the baggage from D&D). You can check out the rules on Archive of Nethys (Google it, not sure if I’m allowed to link in the comments), it’s released under the OGL, and Paizo regularly packages up the core rules and an adventure path on Humble Bundle. They also have a handful of short adventures available for free on their website, and I believe a new one is coming out soon for Free RPG Day.
Also, while I can’t vouch for the system itself I have a handful of adventures for Swords and Wizardry that I got from Humble Bundle (and one I grabbed randomly from Half Priced Books), so I know they exist.
I’m playing 1974 D&D and was thinking of trying Tunnels & Trolls, which really feels like an “anti-D&D” to me (one roll representing attack and defense, armor reduces damage, non-Vancian magic).
Another notable absentee: Traveler (Firefly-style sci-fi)
@James if you can get your hands on some first edition material for the One Ring, it has good published adventures like Tales from Wilderland, Darkening of Mirkwood and Oaths of the Riddermark. It should be easy to convert them to 2nd edition too.
Pathfinder 1st edition also has tons of published Adventure Paths of varying quality.
Another good option is for those interested is Hackmaster. It’s an old-school rpg made with modern systems, and makes for a very crunchy and realistic version of OSR games. I found it after being put off by 5th Edition’s lack of realism and my personal unwillingness to fix it with homebrew rules. It emphasizes the journey to becoming a hero, meaning that you don’t get to start as one (as in 5e and other like systems).
It also features a pretty low bar for entry, as one can just download the basic rules (years of gaming on its own) for free on their website.
@James:
1974 D&D. Every D&D adventure before 3rd edition is compatible.
The lack of credible Sci-Fi is troublesome.
Mongoose’s ___Traveller___, and it’s open source derivative, are modernized versions of GDW’s (still available in PDF} 1977 ___Traveller___ (now called Classic Traveller); an errata-noted-in-the-margins version is available in pdf and PoD. For those looking for loads of adventures, the CT ones are concertible on the fly by many. Classic Traveller is a hardish space opera, inspired by 1950’s to early 1970’s space opera lit… Asimov, Heinlein, Pournelle, Niven… And adventures support several campaign conceits: merchants, mercenaries, exploration, and census… And a few as troubleshooters.
GDW’s ___Twilight:2000___ has a new edition from Fria Ligan (aka Free League) in dead tree and pdf; Far Future has cd’s of the older editions.
Fria Ligan’s ___Coriolis___ is the same inspirations as the Riddick movies, and ___Alien___ is a great adaptation; they use the same core mechanics, adapted slightly… And one can borrow in many Traveller adventures with some minor effort. Both cover the same core turf of mercenaries, shippers… Coriolis adds pilgrims, Alien adds colonists.
Modiphius has a number of excellent games… ___Star Trek Adventures___, ___Dune___, and others. They are outside the Traditional mode, due to metacurrency use, but do stay out of the eay of the setting.
And no list of great D&D alternative games is complete without ___Tunnels & Trolls___, nor its children, ___Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes___, and ___Monsters! Monsters!___. T&T 1e was 1975; 5th was 1979, and was in print to 1997 or so; the Deluxe editions of T&T and M!M! Are excellent updates. Plus, T&T has many solo adventures, and convert-on-the-fly is doable from most D&D editions.
@James:
Do any of these games stand out to you as having a robust library of published campaigns for tired old GMs like myself?
Blades in the Dark and, even moreso, Technoir are designed so that you don’t need adventures. (Technoir is zero-prep out of the box.) Ditto on the all of the storytelling games I listed.
Going down the list, games that I know have a significant slate of published adventures:
– 1974 D&D
– Pathfinder
– The One Ring
– Numenera
– Pendragon
– Night’s Black Agents
– Call of Cthulhu
– Legends & Labyrinths (all 3E stuff)
– Infinity
Don’t forget Palladium, played that many times and the rules are similar to d&d. Great suggestions BTW.
Thanks for this! I’d picked up Magical Kitties based on your past posts and some of my players’ interest, but I’ve also been hoping to find a Shadowrun replacement since I’m lately less interested in very heavy rules. Technoir looks very promising as an alternative that fits into that world!
Oh I wanna go on and on about Kevin Crawford’s “Stars Without Number”. Keywords: space opera, old-school feel, sandbox play, a metric crap-tonne of random tables.
And the setting! Mr Crawford really sets the stage. Humanity is crawling out of the 600 year dark age after the sudden collapse of their glorious empire to see alien ruins, petty kingdoms, cults, maltech, automated orbital manufactories, insane AIs and lots of opportunities to make loads of sweet, sweet cash.
Please check it out! A very active Discord server, sub Reddit, etc, and a hilarious AP Podcast I been listening to: “Astronomica”.
Saddened by the lack of DCC, though I’ll fully admit it required a certain degree of buy-in from the players in order to really shine.
The xWN suite of games (Stars / Worlds/ Cities Without Number) by Keven Crawford are my go-to recommendation for anyone looking to transition away from the fantasy heroics of 5e. They handle different genres (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Cyberpunk respectfully) but the core rules are similar and interchangeable between all three. Character creation is quick yet full of meaningful decisions, combat is snappy and lethal, and magic is strange and powerful. The books are also absolutely stuffed with GM tools for creating missions, settings, adventures, antagonists, and anything else you could need. Best of all, all three are completely free; the paid versions only add some additional and optional GM tools.
The only downside is the complete lack of 3rd party support for the systems. Pretty much everything comes from the man himself, which means there aren’t really any published organic adventures. Still, the games are amazing and the foundation is rock-solid, so I cant recommend them enough.
We recently launched a new ttrpg that gets back to the basics, fun and spontaneity of early dnd called Enlightened. You can currently download the playtest edition for free at https://d9-games.itch.io/
Please also consider Chivalry and Sorcery. Originally published shortly after D&D and now also on it’s 5th edition rules. Lots of good reasons to try it. Uses a d100 + crit dice for skills checks. Provides an in depth character background. Supports low to high Magick but also provides a more realistic medieval RPG.
Nice variety of options offered here. Ten Candles sparked my interest, so I just picked up a copy of that. Thanks for the ideas and hidden gems!
Just wanted to put my 2¢ in for the Savage Worlds system. It’s a universal system that supports any setting (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc) along with several great published settings, such as Deadlands, ETU, and recently partnered with Paizo to convert Pathfinder 1E and some of its APs. Easy to pick up and play, mid-level crunch if you want it, exploding dice, interesting subsystems!
I guess I’m the third person to rave about Kevin Crawford’s xWN game franchise. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Cyberpunk… even post-apocalyptic and cosmic horror. The rules are straightforward and flexible. The books are absolutely packed with content-creation tools, so a GM never has to worry about cooking up a night’s adventure. Gotta love it.
Hi!
I saw you listed Shock: Social Science-Fiction. We made a hack of it, with permission from Joshua himself. It has a new game system that is simpler and more in line with Joshua’s current designs.
Find it here: https://humanities-at-play.itch.io/shock-humanities-at-play
Cheers!
In the wake of the WotC OGL debacle, I’m been putting most of my gaming attention on Dungeon Crawl Classics, which is IMO the best genre emulator of the weird fiction and swords & sorcery literature that D&D was originally based upon. Sort of an “alternate history” spinoff of D&D.
Another game that I had a lot of fun with recently is Kids on Bikes, another very tightly focused genre emulator, this time for 1980s kids’ adventure movies like E.T., The Goonies, etc. (And of course, modern throwbacks like Stranger Things.)
Hi, @Justin, I’m curious and I’d like to understand, why is Burning Wheel a storytelling game in your list?
I think I’m just ignorant, that’s why I ask, but I’d like to understand what I’m missing here, I’d call it a TTRPG.
Thanks in advance!
@Francesco: It’s STG adjacent, thus “dipping your toe.”
@Justin is that because “the winner tells the story”? Or because “the story comes from characters”? I really like BW but it’s not easy for me to understand exactly how it’s different from other RPGs, if you’d like to elaborate just a little bit it would be very helpful for my reflection.
Thanks anyway!
As someone getting really interested in playing Legends & Labyrinths (to get back into 3E without going mad with skill points), I just want to flag that the link to the character sheet file here is broken: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7660/roleplaying-games/legends-labyrinths-beta-character-sheet
Also, L&L question: how were level checks for training supposed to work? It seems to me that if the roll is [d20+class level] and the DC is [10+class level], then you’re just rolling 50/50 odds on your die at any level.
Hello! Thank you for interesting text! Can I translate it for my TTRPG blog? With all credits and links of course.
[…] Looking for a new RPG? The Alexandrian has ideas […]
I have a idea for a game that might go in this list in a category titled”if you want to try something that’s different from every rpg you have ever played, even if you have played a lot of different ones”. The game I’m talking about is maid: the role playing game. Not only is its theme unique it also uses more random tables then anything I have ever played before.
Thanks for the list!
Do you happen to know any game systems that have a good side-game of running a country, army, or guild?
@Justin Is the Legends & Labyrinths Black Book Beta the most recent version? Have you had any interest in revisiting the product?