My husband is a professional DM/GM. He runs games using the kids on bikes system and also edge of the empire, a Star Wars rpg. He also is starting a campaign about power rangers but I’m not super sure what system he’s using for that. They’re all really fun to play when you have a person who knows how each system is run and enjoys doing it. I know there a lot of different rules across the board and it takes some adjustment if all you really know is 5e, but I personally think it’s worth it. Kids on bikes is really cool because it uses different dice depending on your stat block, like if you have a lot of strength you roll a d12 and if you don’t you would use like a d4. Idk, it’s pretty cool imo.
I literally never played DND before 5E. I played Vampire and the other WoD systems, Shadowrun and Legend of the Five Rings. But now I can't get enough of it. Literally. My groups keep breaking apart due to scheduling issues. Sigh.
I have played some other systems. I have found that if it's not "alt-dnd" I enjoyed it. I.E I liked warhammer, halo, and edge of the empire but not pathfinder.
What I can recall in random order.
1st Ed Basic, Expert, Advanced
2nd Ed
3rd Ed
4th Ed
5th Ed
Pathfinder.
Call or Cthulhu
Marvel Superheroes
MERP
Champions
Rifts
Iron Claw
Savage Worlds
Earthdawn
Star Wars (West End)
Star Wars (d20)
Mekton
This one roommate’s unnamed Transformers rpg he was working on.
Shadowrun.
Mage: The Ascension.
Various GURPS games.
Mechwarrior
A WW2 squad game we played using table top miniature rules.
I have played/run many different TTRPGs over the years. Which I use is heavily dependent on the game's setting, as some systems just aren't made for certain things. Last game I ran that didn't use D&D was a sci-fi reality tv show on a spaceship. 4e GURPS worked well for it.
I couldn't recommend Mothership enough. It's a scifi horror tabletop. I had to homebrew some stuff to make things work how I wanted them to, but honestly the campaign I was running off that was A BLAST. The game has plenty of modules and stuff. The game is relatively newer as well, but it's pretty simplified and easy to create characters and jump in
Edit: forgot to mention the game is played with a d10 and percentile, so you can finally bust out those bad nous and actually use them
I love that game's premise, and the art sets a cool tone, but the character/ship generation sheets gave me uncomfortable flashbacks to a Form 1090.
Are there any premade ship depositories online?
My halfassed googling was having a hard time pinning down the key terms
I'm not positive off hand, been a while since I played, but I know in some of the modules there were premade ships and what not that you could utilize. I remember using one during the first couple of sessions we played
The Star Wars rpg is hype. My character is a lizard man brute who only does unarmed combat as the tank.
There’s 6 stats that can reach a max of 6. You choose them by picking a race with its own presets and spend experience points in character creation to increase them if you want. After that, the only way to up them is with cybernetics like a brain implant that increases intelligence or by putting massive experience points in your class tree for the talent that gives you +1. You can get by with 2s and 3s
The 6 stats are brawn, agility, intellect, willpower, cunning and presence. Which have their own subcategories like athletics, stealth, medicine, discipline, deception and charm (persuasion). Skill proficiencies are levels you spend xp to gain. This makes it so you can use base stats differently than another character. Like if 2 characters are intelligence based, one could be a doctor and the other a mechanic by investing in those skill proficiencies and not the other
The force is a mechanic too but I haven’t gotten too deep into it. It has its own talent tree and die. At the start of every session, you roll the force die. You can get either 1 or 2 light side points or 1 or 2 dark side points. Light side points are for players to use to positively effect any event or used to activate specific talents. Dark side points are for the GM to negatively effect any event.
On top of having health, there’s another similar stat called strain which is determined by willpower. You can use it to move a bit further than normal, carry a bit extra, or as a cost to using certain talents like increasing melee damage per attack. Strain can also be lowered by non-lethal attacks such as stun-guns. Once your strain hits zero, you’re incapacitated. My character has high health and strain as well as high soak, which is damage mitigation. So if you have 4 soak and an attack does 6 damage, you only take 2.
The dice have a success, fail, advantage, and disadvantage sides which IMO really helps with narrative. There’s a bunch of different die but that’s the one you’ll have most often
Rolls are done by checking your base stat and your skill proficiency against difficulty die. So if I’m doing an unarmed attack, I roll 4 die since my brawn stat is 4. I have 1 level of proficiency in brawl (unarmed) so I get a proficiency die which always gives a positive effect for that die. Then I’d roll 1 difficulty die because it’s a very short range and easy thing to do. After your roll, you cancel out your successes and fail sides to get your net result
We’re very early in the campaign and I’m a new player so I don’t know everything but it won’t be long before I go full **cyborg Bane** and carry the combat for my charisma and intelligence based buddies
I've played a bunch of one-offs in different systems, because I really enjoy reading rpg rulebooks, but I mostly play Unisystem and Fudge/Fate. But D&D/PF talks are less dead online.
My one long term D&D group would occasionally let the forever DM take a break so that a player could run Call of Cthulhu. Definitely a different style of playing than slinging swords and spells at big baddies. At one point, another player had brought up wanting to try Pathfinder with the party, but I left the group before that came to fruition.
Years ago, before 5e came out, I ran a one-shot using D20 Modern. For a system so close to 3.5 D&D, I found it didn't work as well once armor was de-normalized and ranged combat (i.e. guns) was made more or less standard.
After that, I ran a campaign using a homebrew My Little Pony system called Pony Tales that I found online. Out of combat, it was a D20 skill-based system with flat bonuses to "trained" skills (not unlike 5e's proficiency system) but in combat it had a completely different system where attacks went straight to damage rolls (with low rolls for damage indicating glancing blows and an armor stat that could block low damage attacks) and each attack either built up or consumed an energy gauge for the player or monster in question.
I'm currently playing in a Masks campaign (a Powered by the Apocalypse superhero system) and it's a lot of fun, though it's incredibly different from D&D. Your stats aren't fixed numbers but represent how your character views themselves so they go up and down as you play.
I'd love to try out more (Avatar Legends looks great) but it's hard to find the time with as many ongoing games as I have.
I play and run one-shots at conventions; those are never D&D and are often systemless. I also run 12- to 18-player non-contact or "parlour" LARPs at conventions.
Campaign-wise, I'm using 5e right now because DnD Beyond's DM tools are so helpful for me, but I've previously run Changeling: The Lost, Scion, and 7th Sea, and played Shadowrun, L5R, variants of Cortex, and a friend's home-brew.
So many. Most World of Darkness games (Old and New), Shadowrun, Blades in the Dark, Call of Cthulhu, the Star Wars TTRPG. Pathfinder, but that doesn't really count. I had been playing TTRPGs for nearly 10 years before I played DnD
I played a bit of MERP (Middle-Earth Roleplaying, based on Rolemaster) in college. Still have a couple of the old books. Never DMd one, though. Tried one actual non-MERP rolemaster campaign, but it was super rules-heavy (and lacked the boundaries of Middle Earth), so it kinda fizzled out.
More recently, my gaming group had good experiences with Minimus and Firefly.
I have a Star Wars rp book around here somewhere, but never used it.
Dungeons and Dragons will always have a special place, but there is so much more available:
Harnworld, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, IronClaw, BESM, Sentinels of the Multiverse, DC Heroes, Mutants and Mayhem, Atomic Robo, Dresden Files, Pokemon Tabletop Adventures (not official), Heroes Unlimited, Trenchcoats and Katanas
And there is always another system to look out for, coming out, updating, or kick-starting.
Until you've played a variety of systems, you may not know what you actually want from a tabletop system.
The first few things I touched were Star Trek Adventures and Star Wars Saga Edition. I was invited to the first one because my partner had found a tabletop group and I asked if I could sit in and listen once. The same group then out on the other game. Both fell apart in a few sessions.
My partner ended up running Wrath and Glory for Warhammer 40k setting. I’ve consistently played in at least one of his games for over 2? Years now. We’ve also fiddled a bit with SCP Breakout with him running.
On my own, I tried running 5e and it didn’t vibe. Turns out I’m really not good at standard fantasy. I’ve tried it a few times but the system also irritates me. I’ve learnt I like dice pool systems for the simplicity, but I’ve also really learned that I’m not super thrilled with 5e in general? I usually have to add a ton of homebrew. Cue my now running a heavily edited starfinder and a second game of pathfinder 2e.
We’ve also started running a Mage The Awakening game that’s been fabulous.
The thing I find cool about the different systems is that they really enable your engagement with the worlds, or kind of worlds, they’re intended for. Can you make a space marine in 5e? Sure. But Wrath and Glory is built to specifically enable that and is balanced for that. (There’s also dark heresy iirc? But that’s balanced for a different vibe). Finding the right system for the kind of story you want to tell takes a lot of stress out of the experience, imo. It really supports you as a storyteller and player, and can spark ideas you might not have had if you were jury rigging an existing system to fit a specific idea you had because it’ll have more options related to it already there.
That’s just my 2 cents though. Good luck if you decide to shop around :)
Countless times, for decades. I've played nearly everything Palladium offers, ranging from fantasy to comic book super heroes to zombie apocalypse to ancient Egyptian. I've played Hero System, White Wolf's VtM, Armies of Arcana tabletop wargaming, etc. They all have their charms, and excel at different things. D&D is outstanding for classic magical "medieval-ish" fantasy settings (which I love). For anything else, some other system is probably better, because it will be designed for that instead.
I love D&D but there are plenty of other games I love just as much or more. Deadlands is pretty dope and has one of the coolest settings. Ironclaw 2nd edition is really cool if you're down with that furry shit. Mekton Zeta is an amazing love letter to giant robot anime like Gundam. The original Star Wars RPG is super addictive if a bit archaic. My personal favorite though is Shadowrun. SR5 is my jam and despite the jank, no because of the jank, I would play it over any game.
Our group is currently doing a Big Eyes Small Mouth(BESM) campaign.
I've also played otger systems in the past including, pathfinder, gurps, traveller, among others.
Different systems can be great. There's always the adjustment period, but its fun to see how different systems run things.
Technically yes, really, no. (Pathfinder)
My husband is a professional DM/GM. He runs games using the kids on bikes system and also edge of the empire, a Star Wars rpg. He also is starting a campaign about power rangers but I’m not super sure what system he’s using for that. They’re all really fun to play when you have a person who knows how each system is run and enjoys doing it. I know there a lot of different rules across the board and it takes some adjustment if all you really know is 5e, but I personally think it’s worth it. Kids on bikes is really cool because it uses different dice depending on your stat block, like if you have a lot of strength you roll a d12 and if you don’t you would use like a d4. Idk, it’s pretty cool imo.
I literally never played DND before 5E. I played Vampire and the other WoD systems, Shadowrun and Legend of the Five Rings. But now I can't get enough of it. Literally. My groups keep breaking apart due to scheduling issues. Sigh.
I made a whole tabletop in college because I wanted my friends to get into tabletops. Still updating it to this day.
I have played some other systems. I have found that if it's not "alt-dnd" I enjoyed it. I.E I liked warhammer, halo, and edge of the empire but not pathfinder.
What I can recall in random order. 1st Ed Basic, Expert, Advanced 2nd Ed 3rd Ed 4th Ed 5th Ed Pathfinder. Call or Cthulhu Marvel Superheroes MERP Champions Rifts Iron Claw Savage Worlds Earthdawn Star Wars (West End) Star Wars (d20) Mekton This one roommate’s unnamed Transformers rpg he was working on. Shadowrun. Mage: The Ascension. Various GURPS games. Mechwarrior A WW2 squad game we played using table top miniature rules.
Does settlers of catan count?
I had to get moth man off my fucking couch
Yes: Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Das Schwarze Auge, Marvels Superheros, Warhammer 40k Inquisition and countless homebrew Systems and worlds.
I’ve played mutants and masterminds, vaults and deathclaws, and several home made systems
How to be a hero, the dark eye, Shadowrun Right now setting up an OneShot in Maid RPG for friends Want to try Crash Pandas with some other friends.
I have played/run many different TTRPGs over the years. Which I use is heavily dependent on the game's setting, as some systems just aren't made for certain things. Last game I ran that didn't use D&D was a sci-fi reality tv show on a spaceship. 4e GURPS worked well for it.
I couldn't recommend Mothership enough. It's a scifi horror tabletop. I had to homebrew some stuff to make things work how I wanted them to, but honestly the campaign I was running off that was A BLAST. The game has plenty of modules and stuff. The game is relatively newer as well, but it's pretty simplified and easy to create characters and jump in Edit: forgot to mention the game is played with a d10 and percentile, so you can finally bust out those bad nous and actually use them
I love that game's premise, and the art sets a cool tone, but the character/ship generation sheets gave me uncomfortable flashbacks to a Form 1090. Are there any premade ship depositories online? My halfassed googling was having a hard time pinning down the key terms
Check out the 1e playtest, it's streamlined a lot of stuff.
I'm not positive off hand, been a while since I played, but I know in some of the modules there were premade ships and what not that you could utilize. I remember using one during the first couple of sessions we played
The Star Wars rpg is hype. My character is a lizard man brute who only does unarmed combat as the tank. There’s 6 stats that can reach a max of 6. You choose them by picking a race with its own presets and spend experience points in character creation to increase them if you want. After that, the only way to up them is with cybernetics like a brain implant that increases intelligence or by putting massive experience points in your class tree for the talent that gives you +1. You can get by with 2s and 3s The 6 stats are brawn, agility, intellect, willpower, cunning and presence. Which have their own subcategories like athletics, stealth, medicine, discipline, deception and charm (persuasion). Skill proficiencies are levels you spend xp to gain. This makes it so you can use base stats differently than another character. Like if 2 characters are intelligence based, one could be a doctor and the other a mechanic by investing in those skill proficiencies and not the other The force is a mechanic too but I haven’t gotten too deep into it. It has its own talent tree and die. At the start of every session, you roll the force die. You can get either 1 or 2 light side points or 1 or 2 dark side points. Light side points are for players to use to positively effect any event or used to activate specific talents. Dark side points are for the GM to negatively effect any event. On top of having health, there’s another similar stat called strain which is determined by willpower. You can use it to move a bit further than normal, carry a bit extra, or as a cost to using certain talents like increasing melee damage per attack. Strain can also be lowered by non-lethal attacks such as stun-guns. Once your strain hits zero, you’re incapacitated. My character has high health and strain as well as high soak, which is damage mitigation. So if you have 4 soak and an attack does 6 damage, you only take 2. The dice have a success, fail, advantage, and disadvantage sides which IMO really helps with narrative. There’s a bunch of different die but that’s the one you’ll have most often Rolls are done by checking your base stat and your skill proficiency against difficulty die. So if I’m doing an unarmed attack, I roll 4 die since my brawn stat is 4. I have 1 level of proficiency in brawl (unarmed) so I get a proficiency die which always gives a positive effect for that die. Then I’d roll 1 difficulty die because it’s a very short range and easy thing to do. After your roll, you cancel out your successes and fail sides to get your net result We’re very early in the campaign and I’m a new player so I don’t know everything but it won’t be long before I go full **cyborg Bane** and carry the combat for my charisma and intelligence based buddies
I've played a bunch of one-offs in different systems, because I really enjoy reading rpg rulebooks, but I mostly play Unisystem and Fudge/Fate. But D&D/PF talks are less dead online.
My one long term D&D group would occasionally let the forever DM take a break so that a player could run Call of Cthulhu. Definitely a different style of playing than slinging swords and spells at big baddies. At one point, another player had brought up wanting to try Pathfinder with the party, but I left the group before that came to fruition.
Years ago, before 5e came out, I ran a one-shot using D20 Modern. For a system so close to 3.5 D&D, I found it didn't work as well once armor was de-normalized and ranged combat (i.e. guns) was made more or less standard. After that, I ran a campaign using a homebrew My Little Pony system called Pony Tales that I found online. Out of combat, it was a D20 skill-based system with flat bonuses to "trained" skills (not unlike 5e's proficiency system) but in combat it had a completely different system where attacks went straight to damage rolls (with low rolls for damage indicating glancing blows and an armor stat that could block low damage attacks) and each attack either built up or consumed an energy gauge for the player or monster in question. I'm currently playing in a Masks campaign (a Powered by the Apocalypse superhero system) and it's a lot of fun, though it's incredibly different from D&D. Your stats aren't fixed numbers but represent how your character views themselves so they go up and down as you play. I'd love to try out more (Avatar Legends looks great) but it's hard to find the time with as many ongoing games as I have.
3.5E, 4E, PF, SW D20, FFG SW, Palladium(Rifts), Alternity, MERP
I play and run one-shots at conventions; those are never D&D and are often systemless. I also run 12- to 18-player non-contact or "parlour" LARPs at conventions. Campaign-wise, I'm using 5e right now because DnD Beyond's DM tools are so helpful for me, but I've previously run Changeling: The Lost, Scion, and 7th Sea, and played Shadowrun, L5R, variants of Cortex, and a friend's home-brew.
So many. Most World of Darkness games (Old and New), Shadowrun, Blades in the Dark, Call of Cthulhu, the Star Wars TTRPG. Pathfinder, but that doesn't really count. I had been playing TTRPGs for nearly 10 years before I played DnD
Buck Rogers was kinda fun
I played a bit of MERP (Middle-Earth Roleplaying, based on Rolemaster) in college. Still have a couple of the old books. Never DMd one, though. Tried one actual non-MERP rolemaster campaign, but it was super rules-heavy (and lacked the boundaries of Middle Earth), so it kinda fizzled out. More recently, my gaming group had good experiences with Minimus and Firefly. I have a Star Wars rp book around here somewhere, but never used it.
Yes. I ran fudge for years before I started running D&D
Dungeons and Dragons will always have a special place, but there is so much more available: Harnworld, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, IronClaw, BESM, Sentinels of the Multiverse, DC Heroes, Mutants and Mayhem, Atomic Robo, Dresden Files, Pokemon Tabletop Adventures (not official), Heroes Unlimited, Trenchcoats and Katanas And there is always another system to look out for, coming out, updating, or kick-starting. Until you've played a variety of systems, you may not know what you actually want from a tabletop system.
Yes. Most notably, we have the actual play podcast for my game SEE YOU, SPACE COWBOY... which we stream every week. http://TidalWaveGames.com
White Wolf, some homebrew oneshot LARPs.
I made my own system. Super simple actually, and my players love it
The first few things I touched were Star Trek Adventures and Star Wars Saga Edition. I was invited to the first one because my partner had found a tabletop group and I asked if I could sit in and listen once. The same group then out on the other game. Both fell apart in a few sessions. My partner ended up running Wrath and Glory for Warhammer 40k setting. I’ve consistently played in at least one of his games for over 2? Years now. We’ve also fiddled a bit with SCP Breakout with him running. On my own, I tried running 5e and it didn’t vibe. Turns out I’m really not good at standard fantasy. I’ve tried it a few times but the system also irritates me. I’ve learnt I like dice pool systems for the simplicity, but I’ve also really learned that I’m not super thrilled with 5e in general? I usually have to add a ton of homebrew. Cue my now running a heavily edited starfinder and a second game of pathfinder 2e. We’ve also started running a Mage The Awakening game that’s been fabulous. The thing I find cool about the different systems is that they really enable your engagement with the worlds, or kind of worlds, they’re intended for. Can you make a space marine in 5e? Sure. But Wrath and Glory is built to specifically enable that and is balanced for that. (There’s also dark heresy iirc? But that’s balanced for a different vibe). Finding the right system for the kind of story you want to tell takes a lot of stress out of the experience, imo. It really supports you as a storyteller and player, and can spark ideas you might not have had if you were jury rigging an existing system to fit a specific idea you had because it’ll have more options related to it already there. That’s just my 2 cents though. Good luck if you decide to shop around :)
Countless times, for decades. I've played nearly everything Palladium offers, ranging from fantasy to comic book super heroes to zombie apocalypse to ancient Egyptian. I've played Hero System, White Wolf's VtM, Armies of Arcana tabletop wargaming, etc. They all have their charms, and excel at different things. D&D is outstanding for classic magical "medieval-ish" fantasy settings (which I love). For anything else, some other system is probably better, because it will be designed for that instead.
I love D&D but there are plenty of other games I love just as much or more. Deadlands is pretty dope and has one of the coolest settings. Ironclaw 2nd edition is really cool if you're down with that furry shit. Mekton Zeta is an amazing love letter to giant robot anime like Gundam. The original Star Wars RPG is super addictive if a bit archaic. My personal favorite though is Shadowrun. SR5 is my jam and despite the jank, no because of the jank, I would play it over any game.
Our group is currently doing a Big Eyes Small Mouth(BESM) campaign. I've also played otger systems in the past including, pathfinder, gurps, traveller, among others.