What other system should I try?

[Kafana]

I've played D&D 3.5 for over a year and a half now. During that time I played three campaigns and DMed 2 (currently working on the 3rd one). I've gone over about 25 books so far (5 read from cover to cover, 10 read most of it and skimmed the rest and another 10 skimmed for the most part).

Now, what system would you also suggest me trying?

I've heard of the Call of Cthulhu system, and since Lovecraft generally seems interesting to me (though I must admit I've read only a few short stories) I wanted to try that out. The Dragon Age system also seems somewhat interesting, though rather simple. I'm not sure what to make of Pathfinder, and I heard the 4th edition isn't all that great. I'd like to get into the 5th edition though, though simply because of the Cult of the New.

All of that being said, which systems would you recommend? Coming from extended 3.5, I don't want anything too simple, but I'd like to avoid having 50 books and limitless homebrew I just can't find time to read. Something like 2-6 books to get the majority of the game under my thumb would be awesome.

[Silva Stormrage]

I personally like Legend, http://www.ruleofcool.com, which was originally made by people on this forum as an attempt to rebalance 3.5. They realized it would probably be easier to create their own game and then created legend.

Its a very customizable system with lots of options and is incredibly balanced. It's still a d20 system and some aspects are still close to 3.5 so it shouldn't be that difficult for you to pick up but it has a lot of nuance to play around with. The system does take as an assumption that you will do a lot of refluffing.

[Airk]

If you're actually trying to broaden your horizons, I'd suggest something that's NOT D20. Going from D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder is like switching from Cheerios to Honey Nut Cheerios in your search for a new breakfast cereal.

Call of Cthulu isn't a bad place to go if Lovecraft interests you, though Trail of Cthulu might be more adventurous.

If you're looking to stay within your cozy Fantasy space, you could try Dungeon World or Numenera.

Otherwise, wander over to the Mechanics And Their Effect On Theme thread for more recommendations.

[Kid Jake]

I'd suggest Mutants and Masterminds. It's a snap to learn but it's pretty versatile; you could play Conan, Watchmen, Full Metal Alchemist, Justice League or Dragon Ball Z (in all its ridiculous glory) with the same rule set, pretty much out of the gate.

[Red Fel]

Before I offer an answer, I'd like to ask a question of my own: What are you looking for in your system?

D&D is a heavily combat-oriented system. Most class features are expressed in terms of combat ability, and with the exception of skill ranks, most aspects of "leveling up" consist of boosting one's effectiveness in combat. I mention this because, if you're looking for a new system, a key question is how combat-oriented you want it to be.

For example, I could suggest GURPS, as a great system that can pretty much do anything you want it to. It's a point-buy system, which means that min-maxing is often to be found, but it can be comfortably adjusted to a variety of settings and themes. In my experience, however, it is still somewhat combat-oriented.

I could also suggest Ironclaw (and often do). Although it has fairly extensive rules for combat, combat seems disfavored, as it is exceedingly lethal. The game specifically contains Overkill rules - namely, if you do more than a certain threshold of damage when killing an enemy, you reduce him to chunky salsa and his friends soil themselves in abject terror. Instead, the game focuses on various other aspects of medieval life, such as one's profession and craftsmanship, courtly intrigues, spirituality and the like. On the downside, it involves bunnies. Fluffy, hoppy, bunnies.

I could also suggest Ars Magica, which would be a dramatic departure for you. Ars is a game in three parts, in effect - you control a wizard, who spends most of the game either performing arcane research or engaged in wizardly politics; his second-in-command, who is basically your character while your character is doing research; and your various peasant minions, who generally perform menial labor and then drink. The game is much less action-oriented, and organized into long-term time rather than short-term adventures. It's a substantial change if you're used to the day-to-day antics of D&D heroes.

But really, the question comes back to: What are you looking for?

[Zavoniki]

Wild Talents(or other One Roll Engine games are good)

If you want to be really adventurous you could look into a Dirty World.

Eclipse Phase does some of the Lovecraft stuff with Transhuman Sci-Fi.

Any World of Darkness(new or old) is good(I prefer new personally for the better mechanics).

A lot of it depends on what you are looking for. People are going to recomend systems they like, so unless you want a giant list of systems, giving us an idea pf what you want a system to do would be helpful.

[obryn]

I'll try and make a few suggestions; take them as you will!

If you want more D&D, but want it a little different ... go with a different D&D experience. RC D&D is a classic and freely available as Dark Dungeons. And while I'm a big 4e fan and would recommend that, I'd recommend 13th Age even more for a more narrative take on D&D. Don't go Pathfinder; it's not really a different game at all.

If you want more D&D-style fantasy, but want a much different take on it, go with Dungeon World. DW is awesome fun, and mixes oldschool dungeons and narrative gaming quite well. It will blow your players' minds. If you get this, you should also get the Dungeon World Guide, which helps explain the game a lot.

If you want a lighter, but still very traditional-style RPG with some differences, I recommend taking Savage Worlds for a spin. It's a fun, light, inexpensive game that I wish I could play/run more of. I use this system to run my pulp-action punching-Deep-Ones kind of Call of Cthulhu game. (For more traditional Cthulhu, the actual Call of Cthulhu game is better. But for shootouts & fistfights with cultists, Savage Worlds has a lot going for it.)

If you want a very different kind of game, try out Fate Core. This one might be a harder sell than the others, but there's settings for (for example) Green Ronin's Freeport which somewhat D&Dify it. On the other end of the spectrum, there's settings like Camelot Trigger which is Arthurian Myths + Mecha. Be sure you get a Setting with Fate Core; it's not so much a system itself as it is a system creation toolkit.

There's other great games out there. I mostly recommend expanding your horizons and going outside the d20 fold. But if you want to stay closer to "home," 13th Age is pretty swell (and, if nothing else, is the finest collection of modular house rules for d20 games I've ever found). I've heard very good things about Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, too, but can't personally vouch for it.

[Knaight]

All of that being said, which systems would you recommend? Coming from extended 3.5, I don't want anything too simple, but I'd like to avoid having 50 books and limitless homebrew I just can't find time to read. Something like 2-6 books to get the majority of the game under my thumb would be awesome.

So, you want concise, and you want complex. In that case, there's a designer you should know about - Luke Crane. He is probably the best person in the entire industry at writing rules concisely without losing clarity, and at not using up huge amounts of book space on superfluous nonsense. He also ends up writing books that are pretty long.

The big one is Burning Wheel. It's very Tolkenien, and you should find a lot of it pretty easy to get into, but it also does things quite differently from D&D in a number of respects. If you want something a bit lighter (though by no means light) on the mechanics and particularly like dungeon centered adventuring, Torchbearer is your game instead.

[Airk]

So, you want concise, and you want complex. In that case, there's a designer you should know about - Luke Crane. He is probably the best person in the entire industry at writing rules concisely without losing clarity, and at not using up huge amounts of book space on superfluous nonsense. He also ends up writing books that are pretty long.

The big one is Burning Wheel. It's very Tolkenien, and you should find a lot of it pretty easy to get into, but it also does things quite differently from D&D in a number of respects. If you want something a bit lighter (though by no means light) on the mechanics and particularly like dungeon centered adventuring, Torchbearer is your game instead.

Good suggestions.

Also, Luke is a pretty amusing man.

[Kafana]

Well, first of all, I don't want a space system. Present day is ok, as I can relate to it when I DM, but I would prefer either medieval or some period in between, but no oriental stuff.

I'd like something action oriented, dynamic, but not combat oriented. I want a system that allows characters to "level", and preferably have "classes" of some sorts. In my opinion, classes provide the needed variety to have some of my less story oriented players have the drive to play again when their character is killed.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

When you talk about "action-oriented, but not necessarily combat-oriented", what do you mean?

Actually, even so--Dungeon World should fit the bill. There's a portion of it focused on combat, but the most interesting moves in the game aren't combat-centric. They're about having perilous ventures in a fantasy world, and about exploring that world and finding its treasures.

In that vein, you might also find Monster of the Week interesting. It's a monster-hunting game, so most sessions culminate in a fight against the monster...but that's just the climax. Most of the session involves characters investigating the monster and figuring out how to beat it and where to find it.

[Knaight]

I'd like something action oriented, dynamic, but not combat oriented. I want a system that allows characters to "level", and preferably have "classes" of some sorts. In my opinion, classes provide the needed variety to have some of my less story oriented players have the drive to play again when their character is killed.

My suggestions fit better than I though then.

Burning Wheel and Torchbearer are all about meaningful conflicts. Torchbearer has an actual class and level system, Burning Wheel doesn't. However, what it does have is a lifepath system - basically, you generate characters by picking a series of life paths (usually 4), filling in the associated skills, then doing what you will with what you have left. I don't have my book on me to get the actual specifics, but conceptually you might want, say, a human knight. So you look over the life path system, and realize that that's going to be lifepath 3 or 4. You can look at what feeds into what, and that gets a bunch of different ways to get there. There's the traditional one, where you're born and raised a noble (lifepath 1), that becomes a squire (lifepath 2), who then attains knighthood (lifepath 3), and spends some time as a soldier in a war (lifepath 4). Alternately, you might take a different option. Maybe you're born in the merchant class (lifepath 1), get involved in a naval war (lifepath 2), get back to land but keep the military lifestyle (lifepath 3), and then are knighted for your military deeds (lifepath 4).

As for leveling up, Burning Wheel has a pretty straight forward systems. Your skills go up when you use them enough, but you have to use them on tasks of varying difficulty. More specifically, you need a number of routine tasks (where your skill is good enough to be generally successful), a number of challenging tasks (where your skill is really tested and has a pretty good chance of failing), and with higher ranked skills even a number of tasks where you will fail without bringing in other resources, and even then are probably looking at more of a damage mitigation situation than an actual success situation.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Yeah, lifepaths are effectively mix-and-match character classes, and skill advancement is essentially leveling-up, but spread out in pieces. Well, and it happens gradually through play.

[Knaight]

Yeah, lifepaths are effectively mix-and-match character classes, and skill advancement is essentially leveling-up, but spread out in pieces. Well, and it happens gradually through play.

Pretty much - though I'd consider things like shade changes using artha much closer to actual leveling up. That said, it's also a level of detail that isn't needed for a pitch.

[obryn]

Well, first of all, I don't want a space system. Present day is ok, as I can relate to it when I DM, but I would prefer either medieval or some period in between, but no oriental stuff.

I'd like something action oriented, dynamic, but not combat oriented. I want a system that allows characters to "level", and preferably have "classes" of some sorts. In my opinion, classes provide the needed variety to have some of my less story oriented players have the drive to play again when their character is killed.

Yeah, that's sort of idiosyncratic to D&D, its offshoots, and homages. :)

Torchbearer can definitely work. I'd still suggest Dungeon World and 13th Age, though. That's just me and my group, however - BW and its relatives require players to interact directly with a lot of rule systems, and... that's not my group. :)

Take a peek at Savage Worlds. No classes, but solid rules for action and great character advancement. There are "packages" you can start with that are a lot like classes, though. Works great for D&D style up through modern age.

[Knaight]

Yeah, that's sort of idiosyncratic to D&D, its offshoots, and homages. :)

Yeah. The rest of the industry dropped classes and levels pretty quickly, and they don't crop up much anymore. I have this filed away under 'good riddance', but for those who actually like them it's a problem.

Torchbearer can definitely work. I'd still suggest Dungeon World and 13th Age, though. That's just me and my group, however - BW and its relatives require players to interact directly with a lot of rule systems, and... that's not my group. :)

Had it not been for the explicit statement of favor of rules heavy systems, I wouldn't have suggested these. Both of them are in my list of systems that I'd love to play more, and both of them are in my list of systems wherein there is no way I'll GM them (though with Torchbearer it's a matter of GMing it again).

Take a peek at Savage Worlds. No classes, but solid rules for action and great character advancement. There are "packages" you can start with that are a lot like classes, though. Works great for D&D style up through modern age.

I'd consider it worth looking into as well - I personally dislike Savage Worlds, and pretty strongly at that, but it's popular and it's earned it. Plus, it's pretty widely considered a rules light game for people who dislike rules light games, so there's that.

[obryn]

Had it not been for the explicit statement of favor of rules heavy systems, I wouldn't have suggested these. Both of them are in my list of systems that I'd love to play more, and both of them are in my list of systems wherein there is no way I'll GM them (though with Torchbearer it's a matter of GMing it again).

Yeah, I still have a copy of Burning Empires I picked up at Gen Con many years ago, and I must confess - despite trying, I have absolutely no idea how to play it.

edit:

Yeah. The rest of the industry dropped classes and levels pretty quickly, and they don't crop up much anymore. I have this filed away under 'good riddance', but for those who actually like them it's a problem.

Hmmm, I guess there's Earthdawn? That might be worth a spin. But Earthdawn is nothing if not a "D&D offshoot", complete with every 90's game stereotype you can cram into it.

I'll also go off the beaten path and mention Feng Shui, because why not? There's something resembling classes, and it's got high action and character building tricks. The core system can go sideways due to the d6-d6 (both exploding) probability curve, but it's damn good fun anyway.

[Devils_Advocate]

In my opinion, classes provide the needed variety to have some of my less story oriented players have the drive to play again when their character is killed.

Wouldn't a completely open-ended system be basically infinitely better at providing variety?

For example, in GURPS, you can have an adventuring party that consists of a melee warrior, a spellcaster, and a talking horse. In Dungeons & Dragons, short of making up several new rules yourself, playing a talking horse at all, never mind as a useful party member, is difficult at best. But it's perfectly doable in GURPS*, and this is because GURPS doesn't have a List Of Pre-Defined Types of Character That You Can Play. If it did, "sapient mount" probably wouldn't have made the cut. But GURPS answers the question "What types of character can I play?" with "Um, whatever the GM allows? It's not our job to tell you what you are and aren't allowed to play, we just provide the tools to model things. And yeah, we realize that not restricting your options requires us to give you the tools to model anything, or as close to anything as is reasonable. That's exactly what we aim to do! We're ambitious like that."

Now, that's not to say that lack of classes equals variety. Some games are deliberately narrow in scope, and it's probably reasonable to describe some of them as "only having one class" in contrast to D&D. But it's also reasonable to describe D&D as "making you start with a half-built character instead of letting you build the whole character yourself" in contrast to GURPS.

OK, so since I'm apparently plugging GURPS here, because that's the generic system that I'm familiar-ish with, I guess I should also mention that it generally legitimately simulates stuff, as opposed to D&D's faux simulationism. That is to say, things in GURPS tend to relate to each other in the same sort of way that the things they represent relate to each other. As opposed to having rather poor central rules with a big enough pile of exceptions and exceptions to exceptions to make the system crap out action resolutions that seem close to plausible and/or genre-appropriate so long as you don't think about them too much, most of the time.

... But character advancement isn't something that GURPS really simulates all that well, to my recollection, and if you are interested in both "leveling up" and simulation, you probably want a system that's good at the overlap of the two. Becoming more skilled only due to training during "downtime" seems dubiously realistic, mostly a handwave for the sake of simplicity and a justification for leaving character progression entirely to player discretion. Perhaps more importantly, that's hardly an interesting way of handling things; a good simulation of something is intriguing because you can see how its components interact with each other in a way that mirrors either reality or fiction.

Burning Wheel sounds like it does that better. Heck, not just "leveling up", but the whole "character creation as character advancement" thing that ties starting traits to backstory via the rules. That's an intriguing simulation, whereas "Pay X points for benefit Y, make up a background and how it relates to your character's traits your damn self" is not. And I've heard only good things about Mouse Guard, which used a simplified version of the Burning Wheel system.

*I'm assuming. I'm not bothering to double-check. If I'm wrong, the system is definitely a lot less flexible than I remember.

[obryn]

Wouldn't a completely open-ended system be basically infinitely better at providing variety?

Uhmmm... depends?

Two advantages of a class-based system, here, are that you can (1) keep weird synergies to a minimum, provided you don't do anything silly like free multiclassing; and (2) balance options only in the context of the rest of the class progression, knowing that a great thing at one level can be balanced out by a less-great thing later on. Or vice-versa of course.

[Airk]

Uhmmm... depends?

Two advantages of a class-based system, here, are that you can (1) keep weird synergies to a minimum, provided you don't do anything silly like free multiclassing; and (2) balance options only in the context of the rest of the class progression, knowing that a great thing at one level can be balanced out by a less-great thing later on. Or vice-versa of course.

Even ignoring those advantages for class-based systems, the value of an "open ended" system is 100% determined by the content within said system.

GURPS has a lot of content, but that's about the best thing I can say about it, and there's a reason I didn't suggest it. ;)

[Grod_The_Giant]

Uhmmm... depends?

Two advantages of a class-based system, here, are that you can (1) keep weird synergies to a minimum, provided you don't do anything silly like free multiclassing; and (2) balance options only in the context of the rest of the class progression, knowing that a great thing at one level can be balanced out by a less-great thing later on. Or vice-versa of course.

There's a third advantage, even more important than those two: simplicity. In a class-based system, I can say "I want to play a Beguiler" and be mostly done with character creation*. Even if you have to pick spells or feats or something from a list, it's usually a lot smaller than, say, GURPS, and you've already got the major elements of your character in place to guide you. It's more limiting for players who get into the character creation minigame, but if that's not your thing, there's a lot to be said for the structure of a class-based game.



*At least in a system with good classes. 3.5 does not always usually does not do this well.

[Airk]

There's a third advantage, even more important than those two: simplicity. In a class-based system, I can say "I want to play a Beguiler" and be mostly done with character creation*. Even if you have to pick spells or feats or something from a list, it's usually a lot smaller than, say, GURPS, and you've already got the major elements of your character in place to guide you. It's more limiting for players who get into the character creation minigame, but if that's not your thing, there's a lot to be said for the structure of a class-based game.



*At least in a system with good classes. 3.5 does not always usually does not do this well.

Definitely true, though unlike points 1 and 2, this one can be solved by a 'template' based chargen as well.

[Knaight]

There's a third advantage, even more important than those two: simplicity. In a class-based system, I can say "I want to play a Beguiler" and be mostly done with character creation*. Even if you have to pick spells or feats or something from a list, it's usually a lot smaller than, say, GURPS, and you've already got the major elements of your character in place to guide you. It's more limiting for players who get into the character creation minigame, but if that's not your thing, there's a lot to be said for the structure of a class-based game.

I prefer slot based stuff for this - you have certain skill slots at certain levels (e.g. a pyramid where you have 1 skill at 5, 2 skills at 4, 3 skills at 3, 4 skills at 2, and 5 skills at 1), you fill in some of them (e.g. the skill at 5 and 2 at 4), then you fill in the rest of the slots as you play.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I prefer slot based stuff for this - you have certain skill slots at certain levels (e.g. a pyramid where you have 1 skill at 5, 2 skills at 4, 3 skills at 3, 4 skills at 2, and 5 skills at 1), you fill in some of them (e.g. the skill at 5 and 2 at 4), then you fill in the rest of the slots as you play.

That's... really not the same thing at all. Don't get me wrong, it's a great way for organizing point-buy, but a player can't say "I want to be an elf wizard" and have everything else fall out fr

[Arbane]

I'd suggest Mutants and Masterminds. It's a snap to learn but it's pretty versatile; you could play Conan, Watchmen, Full Metal Alchemist, Justice League or Dragon Ball Z (in all its ridiculous glory) with the same rule set, pretty much out of the gate.

Possibly all even in the same team.

[BWR]

Ars Magica - the basic system is simple and fairly meh but the magic system is definitely worth it.

[Knaight]

That's... really not the same thing at all. Don't get me wrong, it's a great way for organizing point-buy, but a player can't say "I want to be an elf wizard" and have everything else fall out fr

Sure they can. The player can say "I want to be an elf wizard", assign Magic to their highest slot, assign something elfy to their next highest slot if there aren't explicit rules for that (and there generally are), and call it a day. Or they can say, "I want to be a retired soldier", put a weapon skill they think fits way up high, stick tactics somewhere, stick military knowledge somewhere, and call it a day.

[kyoryu]

Games I'd recommend trying:

GURPS or HERO/Champions. Point-based minutae at its finest. You can do fantasy-esque with just a couple of books.

Older D&D - AD&D 1e is fine, but I'd recommend B/X for clarity. No, really. Make some 1st level characters, get a copy of either B1 or B2, forget what you "know" about D&D, and just follow the rules. It'll likely be a very different experience than you expect. You'd likely need a .pdf of Basic, and either the B1 or B2 modules. Done.

Some BRP game - Call of Cthulhu is up there for one. Tkaes a lot of the basics of D&D and expands in interesting directions. Not really sure what you'd need...

Mouseguard - Others have suggested Burning Wheel, but Mouseguard is just SO much more approachable. Mouseguard is a single book.

Some Apocalypse-World powered game. AW itself can be off-putting due to some of its thematic stuff, but Dungeon World or Monster of the Week are great suggestions. All of the AW games that I know of are single books.

Fate Core - A great narrative game that starts off with some pretty different key assumptions. Available on a pay-what-you want basis for both the core game, the "accelerated" variant, and even the system toolkit!

Fiasco - GMless, stretches the definition of "RPG", easy to play and pickup, and almost always a great time. Just needs one book/pdf.

(Really, needing 50 books is the outlier, not the standard).

If you're actually trying to broaden your horizons, I'd suggest something that's NOT D20. Going from D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder is like switching from Cheerios to Honey Nut Cheerios in your search for a new breakfast cereal.

Seriously. It's worth stretching away from d20 based systems just to get a good differing view on how things work.

Otherwise, wander over to the Mechanics And Their Effect On Theme thread for more recommendations.

Where's that? I couldn't find it.

[Knaight]

(Really, needing 50 books is the outlier, not the standard).

I can't think of anything that needs 50. Even 3 is an outlier - there's D&D, and that's about it. 2 is more common (GURPS, Hero, Legend of the Five Rings), and 1 is the vast majority, provided we talk about RPGs that need actual books in the first place.

[BWR]

I can't think of anything that needs 50. Even 3 is an outlier - there's D&D, and that's about it. 2 is more common (GURPS, Hero, Legend of the Five Rings), and 1 is the vast majority, provided we talk about RPGs that need actual books in the first place.

You can do L5R just fine on the core book. The others are extra material - often fun but not necessary.