Why do you play games other than D&D?

doctorbadwolf · Jul 10, 2019

Morrus said:
Inspired by a question somebody asked on Twitter. My response was that every system feels different and provides a different play experience. You can certainly make most any system do anything, but playing Call of Cthulhu with the Mutants & Masterminds rules is going to feel very different to CoC with the CoC rules.

Every game has it's own niche and just needs to serve that niche well.

In the last year I've run: D&D 5E, WOIN, Pathfinder 2E Playtest, Ghostbusters 1980s RPG, Call of Cthuhu. Some for longer than others (Ghostbusters was just a couple of sessions, and we only got halfway through the PF2 playtest because the playtest schedule was so fast). Each of those games feels very different.

So why do you play games other than D&D? What is it that your game of choice does that makes it the best fit for the stories and genres you're playing with?

I consdier DnD a generic game for playing most types of fantasy. I can play modern urban fantasy, star fantasy, classic dnd, romantic fantasy, fairy tale, fantasy Leverage, etc in dnd no problem.

But for some things, it just isn't going to do a great job, and someone built a really rad game specifically dialed in to that specific thing. Like The One Ring. I appreciate the 5e conversion, but I'd rather play The One Ring proper, because it just does a better job of playing like I'm in Middle Earth. There are things that are hard to translate.

Or, I just don't want to play fantasy at all, so I grab a different game so that I'm not building half a game from scratch just to use the 5e engine.

Also a lot of the games out there are fricken gorgeous!

ccs · Jul 10, 2019

It's honestly a really short answer: Variety.

Right now though, RPG-wise, I'm kinda stuck in a rut of 5e & PF. (so 2 flavors of D&D). It's an enjoyable rut, but a rut none the less.....
And on the miniature wargaming front it's virtually all WWII.
So guess what's not at all on my schedule for GenCon in a few weeks?

GrahamWills · Jul 10, 2019

On the popularity and default state of D&D ...

I think people tend to overstate the dominance of D&D -- not that it isn't the biggest player by far, but it seems common to assume that most games are D&D. Even at "Peak d20" this was not the case -- here's the list of events from GenCon 2003 (events counts only, I could not get details on the players allowed per event). I'm not sure that even if we assume some of the living events had huge numbers of players, that even then half the people were playing a d20 game.

So dominant in terms of "no close competitor", but not dominant in terms of "more of this than everything else".
(determination as to which events were d20 does by me using name, rules version and genre. Not evenly slightly guaranteed to be accurate, but I hope errors roughly balance either way ...)

Game	Event Count
* ALL D20 *	368
BESM d20	19
D&D	2
D&D - Living City	12
D&D - Living Greyhawk	21
D&D - Living KoK	10
d20	17
D20 Modern	5
d20 System	3
d20 System - Living Arcanis	8
d20 System - Living Death	7
d20 System - Living Dragonstar	5
d20 System - Living Jungle	7
d20 System - Living Spycraft	5
d20 System -- Living Arcanis	1
d20 System -- Living Death	2
d20 System -- Living Jungle	1
Dungeon & Dragons	59
Dungeons & Dragons	126
HackMaster	4
HeartQuest D20	3
Home Rules - d20	3
Mutants & Masterminds	6
Mutants and Masterminds	2
Mutants and Masterminds (d20)/Modern (d20)	1
Star Wars - Living Force	8
Star Wars -- Living Force	5
Star Wars d20	4
Swashbuckling Adventures (D20)	6
TBA	16
* ALL Others *	833
1492	4
7th Sea	24
7th Sea Roll & Keep	1
Aberrant	1
AD&D	6
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons	17
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1st Ed)	10
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (2nd Ed)	13
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (3rd Ed)	9
Advanced Marvel Comics RPG	1
AFMBE/Unisystem	13
Amber Diceless RPG	2
Ancient Lands RPG	4
Anything's Possible - The Game	2
Anythings Possible The Game	6
Arcana Unearthed	6
Arcane	2
Asylum	1
Big Eyes, Small Mouth	11
Blue Planet	3
Buffy	1
Buffy The Vampire Slayer	3
Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG	3
Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG (Eden Studios)	1
Call of Cthulhu	53
Call of Cthulhu (1920s)	4
Call of Cthulhu, 1890s	1
Call of Cthulu	2
Cartoon Action Hour	6
Champions	11
Changeling	1
Changeling the Dreaming	1
Changeling: The Dreaming	2
CHILL	4
Chosen	1
Cinematic Unisystem	5
Cinematic Unisystem/Angel	24
Cinematic Unisystem/Buffy	18
Conspiracy X	3
Courting Murder	6
Cyberpunk 2020	1
Dark Ages: Inquisitor	1
Dark Ages: Mage	1
Dark Ages: Vampire	1
Deadlands	2
Demon: The Fallen	2
Doom City	1
Dragonquest	29
DragonStorm	29
Dread	4
Dungeons & Dragons	12
Earthdawn	2
Everquest RPG	2
Everway	4
Exalted	4
Farscape d20	1
Farscape RPG	7
Feng Shui	1
Fight the Evil Power	6
Forbidden Kingdoms	2
Four Colors al Fresco	3
Fudge	10
FVLMINATA	1
G.U.R.P.S	1
G.U.R.P.S.	6
GURPS Supers (Golden Age)	1
GURPS Supers (Silver Age)	1
GURPS Supers (Victorian Age)	2
GURPS: Technomancer	2
Hero	5
HERO (Champions)	2
Hero Clix	2
Hero System	69
HiBrid	4
Hunter: Reckoning	3
Immortal	2
IronClaw	2
Jovian Cronicles	2
Justice Inc.	3
Kayfabe	2
L5R RPG	6
Legend Quest	1
Little Fears	3
LOTR:RPG	12
Mage: the Sorcerors Crusade (White Wolf)	1
Marvel SAGA	1
Matrix Game	12
Now Playing	6
octaNe	1
Ogalepihcra/Fudge	1
Ogalepihcra/TBD	1
Over the Edge	1
Palladium	1
Paranoia	6
PlayThings System	4
Revelation	4
Rifts: Southern Brigade	3
Savage Worlds	22
Shadow Hack	1
Shadowrun	23
Shadowrun - Virtual Seattle	4
So Ya Wanna Be A Rock 'N' Roll Star!	4
Spacemaster	1
Spookshow	1
Spycraft	10
ST:RPG	10
Star Wars (TSR)	11
Star Wars (West End)	56
Starchildren	3
Super Human High School	5
Tech Noir	2
The Secret of Zir'An	2
Traveller T20	3
Tribes	1
Unisystem	21
Unisystem/Armageddon	3
Unisystem/WitchCraft/AFMBE	1
Unknown Armies	2
Villains and Vigilantes	2
Violence	1
War Machine	1
Weird Wars II	1
West End Star Wars	2
Wheel of Time	1
When Darkness Comes&	3
White Wolf	24
White Wolf Storyteller System	4
World of Darkness	1
World of Darkness Crossover	1
Wraith the Obilivion: The Gear War	1
Wyn D mere	2
X-crawl	1
Xcrawl: Adventures in the Xtreme Dungeon Crawl League	4
ZERTZ	1
(blank)	12
Grand Total	1201

Umbran · Jul 10, 2019

GrahamWills said:
Even at "Peak d20" this was not the case -- here's the list of events from GenCon 2003

What makes you think that GenCon is a representative sample of gamers, or the games they play on a regular basis?

Since GenCon is a very particular experience that requires a notable effort and investment of time and money to have, and is had only by a small part of the overall RPG community, I would not expect the selection of games there to be representative of what the broader community plays.

GrahamWills · Jul 10, 2019

Why do I play other games than Fate and D&D?
(I'll explain why I modified the question lower down)

These two systems are go-to systems for me. If I think of a game I'd like to play, my first thought is "is it fantasy?" and if so, I default to D&D (actually 13th Age, but I'm calling that D&D for th purposes of this discussion). If it isn't, I default to Fate. The reason is that they can do what the standard genre tropes call for pretty well. D&D can cope with outrageously stereotypical Scottish dwarves, with Elric of Melnibone, with mad-science-built robots, with demons and magic, with Kender, with an evil inquisition, with a good inquisition, with Monty-Pythonesque inquisition. And the truly insane part is -- it can have them play not only with the same set of rules, but in the same campaign!

D&D is accepting of different styles and players in a way that few -- make even any -- other systems are. That's why 5E took a step away from 4E's much more focused play style and is more popular; it moved back to its traditional role as being highly adaptable and allowing a huge variety of anything fitting the genre of "fantasy". And that's a big segment of that players want to play.

Fate is my personal go-top game for, well, pretty much everything else. It also has a very broad set of assumptions and works well for a variety of styles of play. Unlike D&D though, it's not as good at mixing them within the same campaign. It's not as easy to mix and merge styles together. But still, it's a go-to choice.

So why so I play other games? For me, it is because another game hits a niche that I'd like to play. Modern day horror, for example. I could run it with Fate, but a modern-day horror-focused game will likely feel better for that niche; more evocative, more immersive. Or sometimes a game defines a niche -- Toon or Paranoia are good examples. A game can define a niche and then I play it because I want to play in that niche.

I added Fate to the OP's question, because the obvious answer is "I want to play something non-fantasy". It's that, true -- but there's more reason than just that, making it a go-to game for many.

Dannyalcatraz · Jul 10, 2019

Umbran said:
I play games that aren't D&D for the same reason that I eat foods that aren't haggis.

This sentence puzzles me. Because I don’t know your opinion of haggis, I don’t know your opinion of D&D

Scott Christian · Jul 10, 2019

D&D offers clear fun rules for a specific setting. It's the generic fantasy setting.

I play other games because, imho, mechanics intrinsically link to the setting's feel. And D&D offers a specific feel. It does not mold itself well to say, Hyboria or The Witcher or Middle Earth. Those worlds have different feels; gritty, deadly, and limited magic respectively. Those things are hard to accomplish when you have creatures that house a lot of hp, when you have death saves, or books upon books with spells players can use.

But for fantastical story telling that still satiates the rule geek and optimization player, D&D is hard to beat.

Tony Vargas · Jul 10, 2019

Umbran said:
I play games that aren't D&D for the same reason that I eat foods that aren't haggis.

Aye! 'cause yer Nae TRUE SCOTTSMAN!

Tyler Do'Urden · Jul 10, 2019

"Why do you play games other than D&D?"

For the same reason I sleep with women other than my wife... 'cause it's fun!

GrahamWills · Jul 10, 2019

Umbran said:
What makes you think that GenCon is a representative sample of gamers, or the games they play on a regular basis?

Since GenCon is a very particular experience that requires a notable effort and investment of time and money to have, and is had only by a small part of the overall RPG community, I would not expect the selection of games there to be representative of what the broader community plays.

If you have another source of information, feel free to offer it!

I am a little curious why you expect people with less money to being significantly different in their playing habits from those with disposable income. Is there some reason you feel that rich people are more likely to play non-D&D games, and poor people are more likely to play D&D? Looking at prices of games from the time and now, it's not like it's a significantly different different buy-in cost, so it seems you are suggesting an innate correlation between wealth and liking D&D.

I'm going to challenge that assumption, based on anecdotal evidence. In fact, anecdotally, the people buying dwarven forge and flat screen TVs and blinged out gaming equipment that I know of seem to do so more for D&D than for for, say, Fate. But again, this is anecdotal. So I'll stick with the assumption that wealth has at best a weak correlation with roleplaying game preferences. But if anyone has some better metrics (outside of WOTC who I assume has all the metrics, but little incentive to share), I'd love to hear them, being a statistics sort of guy.

EDIT: The "games people typically play" comment seems more plausible. Anecdotally, I know people often go to cons to try new things, so new games, or unusual ones may be over-represented due to that factor. But, also anecdotally, people who's main home game is D&D do seem to play mostly or exclusively D&D at cons, so although it's more plausible, I'm not sure it will be enough of a factor to serious skew conclusions.