Both 13th Age and Fantasy Age are getting second editions/revisions this year. 13th Age will do a kickstarter soon and a revised Fantasy Age core book is going to print soon
Yes you are correct. Fantasy AGE 2e is having preorders for the book and the pdf go up in Feb, so next month. I'm super excited for it! One of the great things about the AGE system is (apart from Dragon AGE) you can take elements/mechanics from any of the other AGE games and with none or small tweaks have them work with each other. Want some cyberware elements in your Fantasy game? Look at the options from Modern AGE. Its a fantastic system imo
When i doom scroll on social media and start feeling the weight of what’s happening to D&D…. Along comes Mike to give hope to the situation. Thank you for being so positive through this weird time we’re living in. These youtube posts are like a beacon in the darkness
Old School Essentials is awesome. Necrotic Gnome is soon going to launch a Kickstarter for their Dolmenwood setting for it! Excited about it, especially since it’s easy to slot into my homebrewed setting.
I'm a Shadow of the Demon Lord enthusiast myself, and I love the system Schwalb has created, as it has empowered me to be a GM myself. That said, I'm also looking forward to Shadow of the Weird Wizard. It really has a different tone to it, but Schwalb's influence can be found in places like the lore or enemy descriptions. It uses the same basic mechanics, but also puts some interesting twists on the established Demon Lord engine. To name a few: abstract zone combat instead of grid measurements, weapon properties for more martial crunch, path-based meta-currencies, fewer but more powerful spells, no insanity or corruption, and so on. The playtest for Weird Wizard finished a few days ago and Rob hinted at a Kickstarter release date in March this year. Hope everything goes well 🤞
Old School Essentials is very suitable for a long term campaign imo. I have been running a game for over a year and at this same time in 5e my characters where so strong I had to lash together the most ridiculous encounters in order to challenge them.
Worth noting is that 13th Age and Fantasy AGE will soon get second editions. Fantasy AGE 2E will come out in Feburary 2023, the kickstarter for 13th Age 2E will be later in 2023.
I'm really happy Worlds Without Number is part of the bundle; it's so good and I'm happy to see it get in more people's hands! The bundle is such a great idea to give out a lot of systems for players/GMs to find the one that really jives with them.
OSE is fantastic! i love the first party modules they've published for it, i love having the ability to drop in any old TSR modules without needing to work to convert them, and i definitely love the deeply creative and weird modules like Deep Carbon Observatory that the OSR scene has created
Index card rpg has been having my attention lately. Because I basically ran 13th age that way. Except I just wrote what the area was. And players could use their actions to interact and I would read off the improvised dmg and effect table. A move action would move you from one adjacent card to the other.
There's a Forged in the Dark (Blades in the Dark's open license) game that's about overthrowing vampire overlords called Brinkwood. The big appeal to me is that its publisher is a worker owned cooperative called Far Horizons
@@paulianhodgson it's not even my usual style of ttrpg, but I literally was just searching for an explicitly worker owned rpg company and they are what I found. I hope people might be able to find others
I definitely feel that perspective that the Cypher System is a GMs game. My friends just don't want to play it and I constantly talk about how cool it is. 😄
I had this sense when I first playtested it, but fixed this issue by changing my mindset on how I ran things. You *can* run it like D&D, but it doesn't shine. It functions, but feels flat when you do a crawl with combat encounters. Unlike PbtA, it doesn't make it obvious that this isn't how you're meant to play. Then I shifted to a cinematic/narrative style. I threw non-stop dynamic action scenarios at the players rather than breaking things up into discrete encounters. Suddenly Cypher shined, because I could improv constantly shifting situations.
Great list! 👍 Having returned to the RPG hobby a few months ago, I purchased most of these systems to get an impression of the wide range of present-day systems. I agree with all of your choices. There is a lot to discover! Unlike 30 years ago, all these systems are complete, well presented, and have been tested for years. And ALL of them are more streamlined than D&D. In the 13th Age, adventurers become almost superheroes over time. And each class plays differently, from the super-easy Barbarian to the complex Rogue. Very gamey. Fate is really story-oriented. Index Card RPG reminds me of video-games, with several different worlds to choose from. Ironsworn almost seems to me like an abstract system to keep stories running. Numenera is super-beautiful with a world like no other, focused on discovery way more than on fighting enemies. Shadow Of the Demon Lord feels like a horror fantasy game with many options for people who do not have that much time, but still want to have the feeling of going through the whole character development in fewer than 20 sessions. And they try to stop the end of the world.
For fantasy style games, I haven’t done a long campaign on any of them, but I like running the Borg games for one-shots or small adventures. Mörk Borg does the dark wacky fantasy very well. Cy_Borg has a fun horror cyber punk vibe and is easy to play. And the recent Pirate Borg fills that pirate fantasy really well! All of those games are super easy and fun to hop right into. For more specific games I like City of Mist. It’s a PbtA modern fantasy style game where your players are solving mysteries but have mysterious powers or their own. Kinda reminds me of the 2000s show Heroes. Deep pull I know. Also Vaesen was a drunk kickstarter purchase of mine, and I’m happy for it. It’s a dark fantasy, mystery game where you can play in a late 19th-early 20th century Northern Europe setting. Very spooky. We love it.
Highly recommend Five Torches Deep, if you want something that feels like a more striped down, simplified D&D. Also pick up the Origins companion book to give your players similar options to what they're familiar with.
Right now my go to alternative RPG is The Cypher System and I hope to run a Numenera game and a super-hero game soon. However, the one game I really really want to play but can't find brave players for is Monte Cook Game's Invisible Sun which is the ideal game if you love magic and the surrealism movement in art.
Ooh, first time seeing Invisible Sun. I love settings where the rules of the world reflect on the nature of reality and what it means to be an RPG a little bit.
I have played in and run Invisible Sun. It's really great if you have buy-in from your players. It is truly unlike anything out there and well worth playing.
Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game is another great alternative and its old school. Would love to have you feature other systems on your channel more often!
Interesting list. For my return to the TTRPG hobby, I chose Pathfinder for Savage Worlds. Just reading the SW rules and seeing how it all fits together has me more excited about playing than anything since I was introduced to the Hero System way back in 1989.
I've been wanting to try one of these non-5e games for a while, but this fracas has definitely ensured I will be doing so after my current 5e campaign ends. Thanks Sly!
Cypher/Numenera has become my primary system. I found it has the best crunch/fluff balance for me. A narrative-first design with robust mechanics that support that narrative.
I'm absolutely loving Old School Essentials. We've been running it for a couple of years and I can't get enough of it. It definitely focuses on player skill rather than character skill which took some getting used to. Amazing adventures too.
Talking about OSE and long campaigns: I think it is totally doable. The focus is not on the characters gaining flashy super powers, but in the emergent narrative that comes with play, the domain levels (if the group likes that stuff), with wizards building towers, fighters building keeps, and so on. Also, it is really common to retire some high level characters for a while and rejoin the living campaign world with novice characters under the veteran's tutelage. Character creation is so simple, anyway. Yeah, character advancement doesn't give you super powers, but the game is not about that. It is about problem solving, avoiding risks, and exploration in many scales (reaching more social interaction and political intrigue in higher levels if the group wants to, but it could totally diverge to a more epic cosmic typical AD&D 2e - 5e style campaign, since the characters are gonna be more resilient, have more magic items, etc). I strongly believe it can be a long term game, one of the best games for that matter, even.
I'd also include EZD6, Not the End, They Came from Beyond The Grave, Pandora: Total Destruction, ARC: DOOM TABLETOP RPG, Knights of the Round: Academy... I am always searching for interesting games with unusual mechanics.
I personally will be looking at really old RPGs, older editions of D&D, the West End Games d6 Star Wars system and those Advanced Fighting Fantasy books.
One thing I would add about Level Up, is that I find it to be more DM friendly. That might seem counter intuitive. However, the exploration rules have massive amounts of DM content that make it easy to keep exploration interesting. Characters get access to thematic social abilities that can be used as good hooks for DM. And the overall quality level of advice, for example the encounter building, variant monsters, and such just has that extra touch. Heck, their version of the Dungeon Master's Guide might be worth it just for the exploration rules to drag and drop into 5E. And their Monstrous Menagerie just gives so much more bang for your buck. While it technically has more rules things seem to flow together in a way that I honestly think would make it better for a starting DM than Original 5E Dnd.
OSE is DM friendly. Super easy to run. It's also basic. No pun untended. You can bolt on 5e stuff you like and leave off what you don't because its just a simple basic foundation. It's super deadly so we added death saving throws for example. We like fighter feats so we added some 3e type feats as found in their Carcass Crawler. Just an awesome system. It's Dungeon Survival as written. Nice video.
I really want to like pf2e, but I find that it’s crunch level isn’t suited to most groups. On one hand, it’s too crunchy for new or narratively inclined players, but on the other hand it really breaks down when it’s given to min maxers, so I’m not really sure who it’s for.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 I am curious what you mean about it breaking down when given to min/maxers. What I have seen so far is because of the action economy a single hyper optimized character is not really viable, it takes a team helping each other to overcome enemies. Plus the way crits + crit fails work adding a level or 2 to a monster completely changes the encounter dynamic.
@@IraRomfh it’s not a necessarily a problem with a power game imbalance. The issue for PF2E optimizers is that the system heavily incentivizes specializing in 1 or 2 actions, which means that the process of creating optimized characters is fun for min maxers, but that those characters usually aren’t fun to play long term. The simplest example is for archers which use feats and features to remove the penalties for shooting multiple times and for shooting in melee such that doing anything else like moving becomes suboptimal at higher levels. (This is also true of other more complicated classes like casters which have ways of overcoming resistances, but I think archers are the easiest to describe)
the dark eye is an RPG out of germany if I remember correctly, and is apparently very very popular over there. There are also a bunch of PC games using it. advanced fighting fantasy I think is some sort of expanded rules set based around the old old fighting fantasy game books - the name would suggest that at least. I loved those old FF game books, owned a ton as a kid. I might take a peek at the advanced stuff at some point
Great video Mike! I'd also recommend Savage Worlds (Savage Pathfinder) since we are focusing on fantasy. Great system gets crunchier at higher levels but overall fun and engaging.
Castles and Crusades would be my pick. It's a continuation beyond AD&D 2nd edition, but with a lot of modern things that the OGL is missing. As a result, you can easily play OSR material, all the way through to 5E material with minimal modification. It keeps the feel of AD&D 2nd edition and, best of all, is perfect for playing things like Dark Sun, Dragonlance and Ravenloft from those eras. Even those early boxed sets of Forgotten Realms.
I've played in and run long running Fate campaigns for 10+ years. We use the Dresden Files version. It is very definitely a solid system with good options for advancement.
Commenting for the algorithm. Been a fan ever since I accidentally won a copy of Dungeon Master Tips just for being your 3,000th follower on Twitter. That little bite-sized booklet was a goldmine. Bought everything else you've published since then. Shocked you're somehow sitting at fewer than 50k subs.
I can run around five complete greenhorns to Blades in the Dark from character/crew creation, first job, to downtime in a little over two hours. I've also run a six-month weekly campaign that showed no sign of slowing down when scheduling pulled it apart. Certainly way more play than 8-12 sessions for a single campaign.
Amazing vid. Thanks for mentioning solo play in the form of Ironsworn / Starforged. There are a plethora of solo RPGs and solo modes for other systems and I think solo play is on the verge of exploding similar to solo boardgames. The new “One Ring RPG” (Free League Publishing ) has a solo mode and Free League’s recently crowd funded “Dragonbane”. I would urge anyone to checkout any of the games published by Free League, Mork Borg, Cy_Borg, Alien, Blade Runner etc, etc.
Great job! Keep up the fantastic work! I love Blades in the Dark. (Even though I haven’t had a chance to play yet 😢. That goes double for Scum and Villainy). I’m also looking forward to learning more about Fate!
I think the gold standard of OSR D&D rules is Old-School Essentials. The layout is amazing. Definitely the best one I have seen to date, at least. Personally, I prefer Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy, because it is basically B/X D&D, but with a bunch of cool options from AD&D 1e mixed in. I strongly recommend getting the two volume set of that version.
Out of these games I think Blades in the Dark is the one I’ve run the most and I adore it. That and Trophy Gold have been my top two RPGs right now. Love the rec for Band of Blade, too. It’s a really good grimdark fantasy XCOM type game.
I just bought both 13th age and 13 True Ways. One of those books ive always wanted never did, and many years later finally did. Yeah I say its basically 4th edition but if the dude who made Pathfinder would have made it. so i always now refer to 13th age as 4.5 edition of DnD. How people see that is up to them lol.
What I’m attracted to is Castles & Crusades and Low Fantasy Gaming. Both have AD&D 2e sensibilities but clean mechanics, as if D&D never went down the 3e road of becoming overly complicated & bloated.
One of my favorite RPGs that I found last year is Advanced Tiny Dungeon. It's a d6 system that's kind of like Fantasy Age, but it's much more fluid. It has awesome flexible character progression that's similar to a Soulsborne game. You have a starring class but when you lvl up yoy can build up any way you want. It's excellent
This is an awesome list, it does a good job of showing off what role playing can be for people who've never branched out before. Personal additions in the same vein: - Savage Worlds is a great system for "pulp adventures". It's built to be setting-agnostic and revolves around making situations exciting! Dramatic! Rules-lite but not wholly "narrative", swingy, lots of support for miniataures. - The Basic Role Playing family is great for people who want more grounded games without getting *insanely* crunchy like GURPS. (Oh, yeah, look into GURPS.) BRP itself and my favorite game ever, Mythras, are great for homebrewing your own settings in any time period. Mythras has some of the most believable, detailed melee combat I've seen. Of course RuneQuest is the OG, Mythras is a more modern offshoot of it but with RuneQuest itself you get the best RPG setting ever written, Glorantha. OpenQuest is another fantasy system explicitly built to be faster / "more heroic". Then you've got Call of Cthulhu for all your doomed-to-die eldritch horror needs. - Paranoia is a very silly game in which the GM is halfway role playing themselves as "Friend Computer", who only wants what's best for you, and for you to know that your fellow players are probably in some death cult and want you dead. - Troika! is another very silly game. It's rules are rather simple. The book itself is fun to read through, and a lot of the charm comes from getting one of the prewritten backgrounds (or picking up more on Itch) and interpreting what it actually means in practice. Maybe you're a Thinking Engine which used to pilot starships, an Ardent Giant of Corda searching for their homeland, or just a fellow of the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks looking for new ways to get shredded.
great games for consideration. do you have any experience with the one ring 2e by chance? otherwise 13th age might be what i try next, after i conclude the campaign i'm just about to start running (unfortunate timing but oh well)
Good video! To discuss what comes across as an offhand comment, I completely disagree that mechanical character progression is necessary for long term campaigns. In fact, quite the opposite. Mechanical character progression LIMITS the campaign length. I used to play adventure path type games, and after a few months, you get up into high enough level that most games are too complex to run, it feels like a different genre than you started out as, and , and you hit the ceiling before too long anyway. The scalability problem of D&D applies to most other games that have strong mechanical character progression, especially levels. 5e tried to solve that with "bounded accuracy" but they didn't really implement it as well as needed. Leveling and other similar forms of mechanical character progression is a trap; it actually forces your game to END rather than allowing them to be truly long-lasting. Curiously, you note this in your Numenera discussion, but I've found it to be true in every level-based game, or other game that has big jumps in character progression. Games like BRP that have slight tweaks, like increase a skill by a point or two, on the other hand, don't seem to have this problem.
With you all the way, just to say: the one advantage of D&D is the # of modules (adventures) available. I am a forever-DM, they provide a plot framework and fresh ideas for locations, NPCs, lore … Embellishing and remixing modules is fun; writing a 2-year campaign entirely on my own is not (for me). In the 80s, my friends and I mostly played Top Secret and I remember the joy every time a new module from TSR appeared at the game store. Just my $0.02.
I always see Old School Essentials but never see Dungeon Crawl Classics mentioned. DCC is similar to OSE as an old school game, but I've found that it is even more random with spell checks and other stuff. It also has the mighty deed mechanic which I enjoy a lot. Both are great systems but I wish DCC got a little more love.
I can back up icrpg gives a lot for little investment probably imo best replacement for dnd. I love Mork Borg and it's compatible games like Demon Dog too and of course wfrp.
Was sad not to see Symbaroum on this list. I am absolutely hooked on this setting, system and the feel of it. To me it’s the most original systems and setting I have seen in a long time.
Here is a short list of great games and settings if you want to break out of just D&D: Exalted, Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings, Mutants & Masterminds, Vampire: The Mascarade
I'll definitely keep Shadow of the Demon Lord in mind. Personally, I'll branch out into cyberpunk stuff and horror for a while. Fantasy gets kind of old when you play too much of it.
I wish to recommend to you all also the excellent L'Ultima Torcia (the Last Torch) by the Italian Serpentarium. It is a very good fantasy RPG made by Italian authors with a strong Old School D&D vive, High letality and High suspence. Thank you very much.
Thanks for sharing Mike. Really looking forward to picking up Shadow of the Demon Lord. Looks so interesting. Have played and own most of the others. I'd like to share back to you! Check out DCC if you have not. Man that's a fun take on D&D. I wish I discovered it years ago. Keep up the good work! I'm gonna open my copy of the lazy DM and prep for my old school caves of chaos session tonight! 💪💪 Thanks again.
I was wondering if anyone had looked at Autarch's Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) and its warfare supplements and how that stacked up against OSE?
Love Index Card RPG and would love to see more recorded gameplay online. It is a great read even to apply some of the concepts to your other game systems.
The GM Section of Index Card RPG is the best I've ever seen. Actually given GM's mentality and tools to make challenges that aren't just XP tuning or challenge rating. Be feared but fair.
So happy to see the recent surge in support and recommendations for the "other games". In this respect, WizBro's stupidity has benefitted the hobby in a way that nothing else could have. I picked up BitD a while ago but the setup has been problematic. Hope to get that sorted and a short Paranoia campaign up sometime this year.
I'm looking for something that's not as basic as OSE, but feels like 2nd AD&D where my characters don't really feel heroic at level 1, but are pretty weak until around 3rd level. Any suggestions?
Unpopular opinion but I feel like I still have years of 5e. I may splash in some new rules if I like them from the next edition. 5e has so much content due to the current OGL... That said I did just pick up shadow of the demon lord and will pretty much buy anything from MCDM.
A good way to showcase a ttrpg is to show the charecter sheet. And the easier less crumchy the sheet is to me the better. The ttrpg that does this real well for me is D100 DUNGEON.
Ironsworn's full PDF is, indeed, free. It's expansion (Delve) and Starforged are not. For anyone interested in trying, I recommend just using Ironsworn alone first and not worrying about these until you are hooked.
I am waiting for my 'Old gods of appalachia' book from M.C.G' however I probably wont use it with the Cypher system. I am planning on using it with my 'Vaesen' game using Free Leagues 'Year Zero engine' system. WOTC D and D 5E, may still be the best known role playing game, but is it peoples favourite because they enjoy it the most or because it is the only one they know? I feel safe in saying the WOTC D and D 5E is not the best TTRPG and certainly not the game I would recommend to someone new to TTRPGs.
Minus one point for no mention of Free League Publishing (though they distribute Mork Borg) and me being a complete Forbidden Lands homer, that point probably doesn't count. But I digress. Nice list! Some ppl are going to get hurt but this might be the best thing to happen to rpgs since Gary and Dave!
I bought shadow of the demon lord recently and I’m looking to run a campaign. Problem is my gaming group is me, my friends and our wives so no one has the time to write a campaign and I am running into problems finding pre written adventures
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Both 13th Age and Fantasy Age are getting second editions/revisions this year. 13th Age will do a kickstarter soon and a revised Fantasy Age core book is going to print soon
Yes you are correct. Fantasy AGE 2e is having preorders for the book and the pdf go up in Feb, so next month.
I'm super excited for it!
One of the great things about the AGE system is (apart from Dragon AGE) you can take elements/mechanics from any of the other AGE games and with none or small tweaks have them work with each other.
Want some cyberware elements in your Fantasy game? Look at the options from Modern AGE.
Its a fantastic system imo
When i doom scroll on social media and start feeling the weight of what’s happening to D&D…. Along comes Mike to give hope to the situation. Thank you for being so positive through this weird time we’re living in. These youtube posts are like a beacon in the darkness
Old School Essentials is awesome. Necrotic Gnome is soon going to launch a Kickstarter for their Dolmenwood setting for it! Excited about it, especially since it’s easy to slot into my homebrewed setting.
I'm a Shadow of the Demon Lord enthusiast myself, and I love the system Schwalb has created, as it has empowered me to be a GM myself. That said, I'm also looking forward to Shadow of the Weird Wizard. It really has a different tone to it, but Schwalb's influence can be found in places like the lore or enemy descriptions. It uses the same basic mechanics, but also puts some interesting twists on the established Demon Lord engine. To name a few: abstract zone combat instead of grid measurements, weapon properties for more martial crunch, path-based meta-currencies, fewer but more powerful spells, no insanity or corruption, and so on.
The playtest for Weird Wizard finished a few days ago and Rob hinted at a Kickstarter release date in March this year. Hope everything goes well 🤞
Old School Essentials is very suitable for a long term campaign imo. I have been running a game for over a year and at this same time in 5e my characters where so strong I had to lash together the most ridiculous encounters in order to challenge them.
Worth noting is that 13th Age and Fantasy AGE will soon get second editions. Fantasy AGE 2E will come out in Feburary 2023, the kickstarter for 13th Age 2E will be later in 2023.
I'm really happy Worlds Without Number is part of the bundle; it's so good and I'm happy to see it get in more people's hands!
The bundle is such a great idea to give out a lot of systems for players/GMs to find the one that really jives with them.
It's such a great system. The DM tools are fantastic.
OSE is fantastic! i love the first party modules they've published for it, i love having the ability to drop in any old TSR modules without needing to work to convert them, and i definitely love the deeply creative and weird modules like Deep Carbon Observatory that the OSR scene has created
Index card rpg has been having my attention lately. Because I basically ran 13th age that way. Except I just wrote what the area was. And players could use their actions to interact and I would read off the improvised dmg and effect table. A move action would move you from one adjacent card to the other.
There's a Forged in the Dark (Blades in the Dark's open license) game that's about overthrowing vampire overlords called Brinkwood. The big appeal to me is that its publisher is a worker owned cooperative called Far Horizons
This sounds great, def gonna check it out.
@@paulianhodgson it's not even my usual style of ttrpg, but I literally was just searching for an explicitly worker owned rpg company and they are what I found. I hope people might be able to find others
Fantasy AGE and its derivatives are really interesting! The stunt system really sets the game apart.
I definitely feel that perspective that the Cypher System is a GMs game. My friends just don't want to play it and I constantly talk about how cool it is. 😄
I had this sense when I first playtested it, but fixed this issue by changing my mindset on how I ran things.
You *can* run it like D&D, but it doesn't shine. It functions, but feels flat when you do a crawl with combat encounters. Unlike PbtA, it doesn't make it obvious that this isn't how you're meant to play.
Then I shifted to a cinematic/narrative style. I threw non-stop dynamic action scenarios at the players rather than breaking things up into discrete encounters. Suddenly Cypher shined, because I could improv constantly shifting situations.
Great list! 👍
Having returned to the RPG hobby a few months ago, I purchased most of these systems to get an impression of the wide range of present-day systems. I agree with all of your choices. There is a lot to discover!
Unlike 30 years ago, all these systems are complete, well presented, and have been tested for years. And ALL of them are more streamlined than D&D.
In the 13th Age, adventurers become almost superheroes over time. And each class plays differently, from the super-easy Barbarian to the complex Rogue. Very gamey.
Fate is really story-oriented.
Index Card RPG reminds me of video-games, with several different worlds to choose from.
Ironsworn almost seems to me like an abstract system to keep stories running.
Numenera is super-beautiful with a world like no other, focused on discovery way more than on fighting enemies.
Shadow Of the Demon Lord feels like a horror fantasy game with many options for people who do not have that much time, but still want to have the feeling of going through the whole character development in fewer than 20 sessions. And they try to stop the end of the world.
For fantasy style games, I haven’t done a long campaign on any of them, but I like running the Borg games for one-shots or small adventures. Mörk Borg does the dark wacky fantasy very well. Cy_Borg has a fun horror cyber punk vibe and is easy to play. And the recent Pirate Borg fills that pirate fantasy really well! All of those games are super easy and fun to hop right into.
For more specific games I like City of Mist. It’s a PbtA modern fantasy style game where your players are solving mysteries but have mysterious powers or their own. Kinda reminds me of the 2000s show Heroes. Deep pull I know.
Also Vaesen was a drunk kickstarter purchase of mine, and I’m happy for it. It’s a dark fantasy, mystery game where you can play in a late 19th-early 20th century Northern Europe setting. Very spooky. We love it.
Highly recommend Five Torches Deep, if you want something that feels like a more striped down, simplified D&D. Also pick up the Origins companion book to give your players similar options to what they're familiar with.
Right now my go to alternative RPG is The Cypher System and I hope to run a Numenera game and a super-hero game soon. However, the one game I really really want to play but can't find brave players for is Monte Cook Game's Invisible Sun which is the ideal game if you love magic and the surrealism movement in art.
Ooh, first time seeing Invisible Sun. I love settings where the rules of the world reflect on the nature of reality and what it means to be an RPG a little bit.
I have played in and run Invisible Sun. It's really great if you have buy-in from your players. It is truly unlike anything out there and well worth playing.
Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game is another great alternative and its old school. Would love to have you feature other systems on your channel more often!
Interesting list. For my return to the TTRPG hobby, I chose Pathfinder for Savage Worlds. Just reading the SW rules and seeing how it all fits together has me more excited about playing than anything since I was introduced to the Hero System way back in 1989.
I've been wanting to try one of these non-5e games for a while, but this fracas has definitely ensured I will be doing so after my current 5e campaign ends. Thanks Sly!
Cypher/Numenera has become my primary system. I found it has the best crunch/fluff balance for me.
A narrative-first design with robust mechanics that support that narrative.
I'm absolutely loving Old School Essentials. We've been running it for a couple of years and I can't get enough of it. It definitely focuses on player skill rather than character skill which took some getting used to. Amazing adventures too.
Talking about OSE and long campaigns: I think it is totally doable. The focus is not on the characters gaining flashy super powers, but in the emergent narrative that comes with play, the domain levels (if the group likes that stuff), with wizards building towers, fighters building keeps, and so on. Also, it is really common to retire some high level characters for a while and rejoin the living campaign world with novice characters under the veteran's tutelage. Character creation is so simple, anyway. Yeah, character advancement doesn't give you super powers, but the game is not about that. It is about problem solving, avoiding risks, and exploration in many scales (reaching more social interaction and political intrigue in higher levels if the group wants to, but it could totally diverge to a more epic cosmic typical AD&D 2e - 5e style campaign, since the characters are gonna be more resilient, have more magic items, etc). I strongly believe it can be a long term game, one of the best games for that matter, even.
I'd also include EZD6, Not the End, They Came from Beyond The Grave, Pandora: Total Destruction, ARC: DOOM TABLETOP RPG, Knights of the Round: Academy... I am always searching for interesting games with unusual mechanics.
I can't believe how helpful this is. Thank you! You give enough detail about each system -- I can tell you've actually played them. This is wonderful.
I personally will be looking at really old RPGs, older editions of D&D, the West End Games d6 Star Wars system and those Advanced Fighting Fantasy books.
WEG D6 Star Wars is my favorite game. Still play 30 years on
One thing I would add about Level Up, is that I find it to be more DM friendly. That might seem counter intuitive. However, the exploration rules have massive amounts of DM content that make it easy to keep exploration interesting. Characters get access to thematic social abilities that can be used as good hooks for DM. And the overall quality level of advice, for example the encounter building, variant monsters, and such just has that extra touch.
Heck, their version of the Dungeon Master's Guide might be worth it just for the exploration rules to drag and drop into 5E. And their Monstrous Menagerie just gives so much more bang for your buck.
While it technically has more rules things seem to flow together in a way that I honestly think would make it better for a starting DM than Original 5E Dnd.
OSE is DM friendly. Super easy to run. It's also basic. No pun untended. You can bolt on 5e stuff you like and leave off what you don't because its just a simple basic foundation. It's super deadly so we added death saving throws for example. We like fighter feats so we added some 3e type feats as found in their Carcass Crawler. Just an awesome system. It's Dungeon Survival as written. Nice video.
Great list! My 2 favorite alternatives to D&D are Dungeon Crawl Classics and Pathfinder 2e.
I just played in a demo session of DCC yesterday. It was a blast and had pretty epic enemies.
I really want to like pf2e, but I find that it’s crunch level isn’t suited to most groups.
On one hand, it’s too crunchy for new or narratively inclined players, but on the other hand it really breaks down when it’s given to min maxers, so I’m not really sure who it’s for.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 I am curious what you mean about it breaking down when given to min/maxers. What I have seen so far is because of the action economy a single hyper optimized character is not really viable, it takes a team helping each other to overcome enemies. Plus the way crits + crit fails work adding a level or 2 to a monster completely changes the encounter dynamic.
@@IraRomfh it’s not a necessarily a problem with a power game imbalance.
The issue for PF2E optimizers is that the system heavily incentivizes specializing in 1 or 2 actions, which means that the process of creating optimized characters is fun for min maxers, but that those characters usually aren’t fun to play long term.
The simplest example is for archers which use feats and features to remove the penalties for shooting multiple times and for shooting in melee such that doing anything else like moving becomes suboptimal at higher levels.
(This is also true of other more complicated classes like casters which have ways of overcoming resistances, but I think archers are the easiest to describe)
the dark eye is an RPG out of germany if I remember correctly, and is apparently very very popular over there. There are also a bunch of PC games using it. advanced fighting fantasy I think is some sort of expanded rules set based around the old old fighting fantasy game books - the name would suggest that at least. I loved those old FF game books, owned a ton as a kid. I might take a peek at the advanced stuff at some point
Great video Mike! I'd also recommend Savage Worlds (Savage Pathfinder) since we are focusing on fantasy. Great system gets crunchier at higher levels but overall fun and engaging.
Castles and Crusades would be my pick. It's a continuation beyond AD&D 2nd edition, but with a lot of modern things that the OGL is missing. As a result, you can easily play OSR material, all the way through to 5E material with minimal modification. It keeps the feel of AD&D 2nd edition and, best of all, is perfect for playing things like Dark Sun, Dragonlance and Ravenloft from those eras. Even those early boxed sets of Forgotten Realms.
And Castles and Crusades can be easily modified for any systems you like from other games or editions. Wonderful system!
I've played in and run long running Fate campaigns for 10+ years. We use the Dresden Files version.
It is very definitely a solid system with good options for advancement.
Commenting for the algorithm. Been a fan ever since I accidentally won a copy of Dungeon Master Tips just for being your 3,000th follower on Twitter. That little bite-sized booklet was a goldmine. Bought everything else you've published since then. Shocked you're somehow sitting at fewer than 50k subs.
I can run around five complete greenhorns to Blades in the Dark from character/crew creation, first job, to downtime in a little over two hours. I've also run a six-month weekly campaign that showed no sign of slowing down when scheduling pulled it apart. Certainly way more play than 8-12 sessions for a single campaign.
Amazing vid. Thanks for mentioning solo play in the form of Ironsworn / Starforged. There are a plethora of solo RPGs and solo modes for other systems and I think solo play is on the verge of exploding similar to solo boardgames. The new “One Ring RPG” (Free League Publishing ) has a solo mode and Free League’s recently crowd funded “Dragonbane”. I would urge anyone to checkout any of the games published by Free League, Mork Borg, Cy_Borg, Alien, Blade Runner etc, etc.
Thanks for all the links. That 13th age sale was too good to good to pass up!🔥🔥🔥
Great job! Keep up the fantastic work! I love Blades in the Dark. (Even though I haven’t had a chance to play yet 😢. That goes double for Scum and Villainy). I’m also looking forward to learning more about Fate!
This list is great. I am definitely sharing this with my players. I also appreciate the light to crunchy values for the games.
I think the gold standard of OSR D&D rules is Old-School Essentials. The layout is amazing. Definitely the best one I have seen to date, at least. Personally, I prefer Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy, because it is basically B/X D&D, but with a bunch of cool options from AD&D 1e mixed in. I strongly recommend getting the two volume set of that version.
How is it I never see Shadowrun, or World of darkness, in any of these or at least Deadlands. Has everyone forgotten about Call of cuthlhu.
Out of these games I think Blades in the Dark is the one I’ve run the most and I adore it. That and Trophy Gold have been my top two RPGs right now. Love the rec for Band of Blade, too. It’s a really good grimdark fantasy XCOM type game.
I just bought both 13th age and 13 True Ways. One of those books ive always wanted never did, and many years later finally did. Yeah I say its basically 4th edition but if the dude who made Pathfinder would have made it. so i always now refer to 13th age as 4.5 edition of DnD. How people see that is up to them lol.
What I’m attracted to is Castles & Crusades and Low Fantasy Gaming. Both have AD&D 2e sensibilities but clean mechanics, as if D&D never went down the 3e road of becoming overly complicated & bloated.
Sly, thank you so much for your ideas and thoughts! I really enjoyed your ideas & opinions.
I absolutely fell in love with Into the Odd, by far my favorite of the OSR games.
One of my favorite RPGs that I found last year is Advanced Tiny Dungeon. It's a d6 system that's kind of like Fantasy Age, but it's much more fluid. It has awesome flexible character progression that's similar to a Soulsborne game. You have a starring class but when you lvl up yoy can build up any way you want. It's excellent
This is an awesome list, it does a good job of showing off what role playing can be for people who've never branched out before. Personal additions in the same vein:
- Savage Worlds is a great system for "pulp adventures". It's built to be setting-agnostic and revolves around making situations exciting! Dramatic! Rules-lite but not wholly "narrative", swingy, lots of support for miniataures.
- The Basic Role Playing family is great for people who want more grounded games without getting *insanely* crunchy like GURPS. (Oh, yeah, look into GURPS.) BRP itself and my favorite game ever, Mythras, are great for homebrewing your own settings in any time period. Mythras has some of the most believable, detailed melee combat I've seen. Of course RuneQuest is the OG, Mythras is a more modern offshoot of it but with RuneQuest itself you get the best RPG setting ever written, Glorantha. OpenQuest is another fantasy system explicitly built to be faster / "more heroic". Then you've got Call of Cthulhu for all your doomed-to-die eldritch horror needs.
- Paranoia is a very silly game in which the GM is halfway role playing themselves as "Friend Computer", who only wants what's best for you, and for you to know that your fellow players are probably in some death cult and want you dead.
- Troika! is another very silly game. It's rules are rather simple. The book itself is fun to read through, and a lot of the charm comes from getting one of the prewritten backgrounds (or picking up more on Itch) and interpreting what it actually means in practice. Maybe you're a Thinking Engine which used to pilot starships, an Ardent Giant of Corda searching for their homeland, or just a fellow of the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks looking for new ways to get shredded.
Thank you. I am checking out Ironsworn right now. :)
great games for consideration. do you have any experience with the one ring 2e by chance?
otherwise 13th age might be what i try next, after i conclude the campaign i'm just about to start running (unfortunate timing but oh well)
Blades in the Dark is so great, and Band of Blades as well. Such a simple system but so flexible.
Your previous video inspired me to get the Non-OGL bundle
All these games look cool. There's also a little game called Pathfinder that D&D fans might like.
Dungeon Crawl Classics deserves a mention!
I love Old School Essentials. Lately I am all into Mörg Borg
Dragon Age!
Love it. I created a Star Wars version of it back in the day.
Good video! To discuss what comes across as an offhand comment, I completely disagree that mechanical character progression is necessary for long term campaigns. In fact, quite the opposite. Mechanical character progression LIMITS the campaign length. I used to play adventure path type games, and after a few months, you get up into high enough level that most games are too complex to run, it feels like a different genre than you started out as, and , and you hit the ceiling before too long anyway. The scalability problem of D&D applies to most other games that have strong mechanical character progression, especially levels. 5e tried to solve that with "bounded accuracy" but they didn't really implement it as well as needed. Leveling and other similar forms of mechanical character progression is a trap; it actually forces your game to END rather than allowing them to be truly long-lasting. Curiously, you note this in your Numenera discussion, but I've found it to be true in every level-based game, or other game that has big jumps in character progression. Games like BRP that have slight tweaks, like increase a skill by a point or two, on the other hand, don't seem to have this problem.
With you all the way, just to say: the one advantage of D&D is the # of modules (adventures) available. I am a forever-DM, they provide a plot framework and fresh ideas for locations, NPCs, lore … Embellishing and remixing modules is fun; writing a 2-year campaign entirely on my own is not (for me). In the 80s, my friends and I mostly played Top Secret and I remember the joy every time a new module from TSR appeared at the game store. Just my $0.02.
I have half of these, and now my group has a reason to finally try them. Thank you WotC.
I used to run 13th regularly but haven't for a few years. Are they still publishing stuff for it?
"Get out there and play some role playing games." Nice little change you did there for your sign off. 👌
The 2nd Edition of Fantasy Age comes out in February 2023!
Yes and Im super excited about it!
"Dark, dark things, man. Dark, bad stuff..." Your Lebowski came through load and clear, dude. 😂
Fantasy Age 2e is apparently coming in February according the publisher, Green Ronin Publishing.
I always see Old School Essentials but never see Dungeon Crawl Classics mentioned. DCC is similar to OSE as an old school game, but I've found that it is even more random with spell checks and other stuff. It also has the mighty deed mechanic which I enjoy a lot. Both are great systems but I wish DCC got a little more love.
Thanks so much for this video, I was looking for a list exactly like this. Really excited to finally try other tRPGs!
Excellent episode!! I'll be trying some of these. I already play Old School Essentials. I also want to do a shout out for Basic Fantasy!
Loving all the lists, but 13th age is my goat!
I can back up icrpg gives a lot for little investment probably imo best replacement for dnd. I love Mork Borg and it's compatible games like Demon Dog too and of course wfrp.
Was sad not to see Symbaroum on this list. I am absolutely hooked on this setting, system and the feel of it. To me it’s the most original systems and setting I have seen in a long time.
Dungeon World and Ironsworn is also very good 😁
Here is a short list of great games and settings if you want to break out of just D&D: Exalted, Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings, Mutants & Masterminds, Vampire: The Mascarade
I'll definitely keep Shadow of the Demon Lord in mind. Personally, I'll branch out into cyberpunk stuff and horror for a while. Fantasy gets kind of old when you play too much of it.
I wish to recommend to you all also the excellent L'Ultima Torcia (the Last Torch) by the Italian Serpentarium. It is a very good fantasy RPG made by Italian authors with a strong Old School D&D vive, High letality and High suspence. Thank you very much.
Thanks for sharing Mike. Really looking forward to picking up Shadow of the Demon Lord. Looks so interesting.
Have played and own most of the others.
I'd like to share back to you! Check out DCC if you have not. Man that's a fun take on D&D. I wish I discovered it years ago.
Keep up the good work! I'm gonna open my copy of the lazy DM and prep for my old school caves of chaos session tonight! 💪💪 Thanks again.
Thanks for the awesome list, Mike!
I'd love to see you give a look at Jackals: Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying.
Eagerly awaiting Shadow of the Weird Wizard!
I was wondering if anyone had looked at Autarch's Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) and its warfare supplements and how that stacked up against OSE?
Love Index Card RPG and would love to see more recorded gameplay online. It is a great read even to apply some of the concepts to your other game systems.
The GM Section of Index Card RPG is the best I've ever seen. Actually given GM's mentality and tools to make challenges that aren't just XP tuning or challenge rating. Be feared but fair.
Completely agree, I have taken the zone based movement over to D&D and the general cinematic fun idea as well.
@@MrBrianofarrell If you watch Runehammer's Index Card RPG is here! video, he explains the "concept" or zones approach too.
In case you didn't know about them, there are several Alfmarches gameplay videos on the Kane's Kiln channel and the Rat King's Receptacle channel
Everway, Amber, Ars Magica, Talislanta, Lex Arcana, One Ring, Gurps, and Morra.
So happy to see the recent surge in support and recommendations for the "other games".
In this respect, WizBro's stupidity has benefitted the hobby in a way that nothing else could have.
I picked up BitD a while ago but the setup has been problematic. Hope to get that sorted and a short Paranoia campaign up sometime this year.
Mike what is your opinion on Pathfinder 2e?
Sorry if you've covered this somewhere else, but what do you think about Pathfinder 2e?
I'm looking for something that's not as basic as OSE, but feels like 2nd AD&D where my characters don't really feel heroic at level 1, but are pretty weak until around 3rd level. Any suggestions?
Castles and Crusades
Castles and Crusades
Unpopular opinion but I feel like I still have years of 5e. I may splash in some new rules if I like them from the next edition. 5e has so much content due to the current OGL... That said I did just pick up shadow of the demon lord and will pretty much buy anything from MCDM.
I cannot imagine 8-12 sessions being a Blades in the Dark full campaign, there is very little you can improve in the crew with only so many scores!
Dragon Warriors from serpent King Games will also scratch your D&D itch.
A good way to showcase a ttrpg is to show the charecter sheet. And the easier less crumchy the sheet is to me the better. The ttrpg that does this real well for me is
D100 DUNGEON.
Very nice list; thank you for sharing this
Ironsworn's full PDF is, indeed, free. It's expansion (Delve) and Starforged are not. For anyone interested in trying, I recommend just using Ironsworn alone first and not worrying about these until you are hooked.
I am waiting for my 'Old gods of appalachia' book from M.C.G' however I probably wont use it with the Cypher system. I am planning on using it with my 'Vaesen' game using Free Leagues 'Year Zero engine' system. WOTC D and D 5E, may still be the best known role playing game, but is it peoples favourite because they enjoy it the most or because it is the only one they know? I feel safe in saying the WOTC D and D 5E is not the best TTRPG and certainly not the game I would recommend to someone new to TTRPGs.
You should check out EZD6 by DM Scotty! Published by Runehammer. You'll love it!
Big Eyes Small Mouth (BESM)
It is a Tri-Stat game that is Anime TTRPG that uses D6
Castles & Crusades is the best "D&D" since 1st Edition.
Agreed and as I commented above under another post, it's very modular so you can modify or add any systems you like.
Don’t forget Basic Fantasy RPG!
Check out EZD6 too. It's a ttrpg system that just came out and is Scotty McFarland's (DM Scotty's) rules light take on the genre.
I noticed Pathfinder didn't make this list. Is there a specific reason? I don't play PF but was thinking of making the switch
I'm finding that the PF2e rules are too crunchy for casual gamers. It's a great game for what it does but it fills a niche within a niche.
@@simonfernandes6809 thanks
Minus one point for no mention of Free League Publishing (though they distribute Mork Borg) and me being a complete Forbidden Lands homer, that point probably doesn't count. But I digress. Nice list! Some ppl are going to get hurt but this might be the best thing to happen to rpgs since Gary and Dave!
I bought shadow of the demon lord recently and I’m looking to run a campaign. Problem is my gaming group is me, my friends and our wives so no one has the time to write a campaign and I am running into problems finding pre written adventures
Why no L5R? Legend of the Five Rings?