anyway, i'm not salty about that, i'm glad more and more people are roleplaying. but i thought i'd make a thread about games other than d&d to show that there's a lot out there! not just fantasy, but crime, occult, horror, detective, post-apocalyptic, and more! narrativist/storytelling games are the new(ish) hot thing, as well as more rules-light versions of old d&d rules (dubbed the old-school renaissance or OSR in the rpg blogosphere) but there are rules heavy crunchy systems that i love too.
the tabletop rpg community can be pretty shitty tbh but there are some good eggs and i thought i'd make a thread about some things i like and i thought boarders might be interested in so they don't have to sift through the misogynistic, racist you name it bullshit that is a lot of the community
here's a good document that does a lot of the work for me (i didn't write it): https://docs.google.com/document/d/19EfAN7KoU7rWy-TYchf8wVkbfbkRRrv3_ZpnA7ZNljU/edit
but i have a few systems that are near and dear to my heart:
dungeon crawl classics - http://goodman-games.com/dungeon-crawl-classics-rpg/
d&d but a lot more metal. frank frazetta style. uses goofy dice - d5, d7, d13, d30. lots of cool ideas - every time you cast a spell, depending on your roll, weird things can happen (both bad and good). magic corrupts you, dwarves can smell gold, and in the beginning everyone has 4 0-level characters that are gong farmers or various riff raff and whoever survives gets to become a 1st level character and choose your class
reign - https://gregstolze.com/reign1/
this game is all about running a "Company" - which could be a thieves guild, a merchant empire, an aristocratic family, some pirates, opium smugglers, a city, you name it. comes with a wacky setting - the two continents are shaped like a man and a woman embracing, gravity in the oceans orients towards the sea floor so when you look at the ocean from land it rises up ninety degrees forever, men can't ride horses because it makes them impotent so all cavalry are female, only one of the world's races is white (and they are like weird vampire people). the system is a lot different than d&d or a % based one, called the One Roll Engine. it's elegant and i love it.
unknown armies - http://www.atlas-games.com/unknownarmies/
the same designer as reig, greg stolze, is a cool guy who also designed this weird game. play if you like grant morrison comics, tim powers books, or just the occult and conspiracies in general. billed as a "an occult game about broken people conspiring to fix the world”, you get to play unstable magicians that gain magical energy from their obsessions - a thief may well be a kleptomancer, a drunk a dipsomancer, a vhs obsessive a videomancer and so on. and all of these people are in an eternal occult struggle. all of the worlds conspiracies also may as well be true. a really cool game, if a bit hard to run well
heroquest/runequest/etc - https://www.chaosium.com/glorantha-1/
runequest was one of the first non-d&d fantasy games, created by greg stafford in the 70s. he created a bronze age world called glorantha in which gods are real and the myths/beliefs of all the worlds people are concurrently true (even when they are contradictory), bronze is the bones of dead gods, and the world is a pill shape floating in the cosmic ocean. there's a lot more, it's one of my favorite settings of all time. runequest is getting a new edition soon and heroquest is a more narrative focused rules light game set in glorantha. the videogame king of dragon pass is set in glorantha, so buy that on your phone and you'll get more of an idea of the weird ass world
another weird and old school setting is tekumel / empire of the petal throne - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_the_Petal_Throne
a truly bizarre setting that combines aztec, ancient south asian and also sci fi. read about it if you like insane invented worlds (obviously i do)
in terms of what's hip now, the games are definitely Apocalypse World and games based on its system - called games Powered by the Apocalpyse (PbtA) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_by_the_Apocalypse
these games are all about the conversation and are basically player facing. a lot of really cool ideas in them. apocalypse world is obv set in the post apocalypse, but there are a lot of other games in other genres
Blades in the Dark - https://www.evilhat.com/home/blades-in-the-dark/
which is nominally a PbtA game, but a little more structured. you play a gang of criminals (assassins or fences or smugglers or whatever) in a steampunk like city that's powered by the blood of demon whales.
a new one that seems great is the spire - http://rowanrookanddecard.com/spire-rpg/
Spire is a roleplaying game about desperate revolutionary dark elves caught up in a secret war against the high elves, or aelfir, who rule the towering city of Spire.
also, this game sounds fun and i always think of dragons when i read about it - ryuutama -http://kotohi.com/ryuutama/which is a japanese trpg about going on epic travels. it de- emphasizes combat it favor for having cute fantasy adventures focused on travelling. i really want to play it but my current group would never go for it
anyway that's it for now, i'll write a post about horror/investigative games and maybe some other ones tomorrow
resident hipinion trpg nerdlingers, please chime in (jeremy, merciel, svc, &c.)
this can just be the place to chat about roleplaying too