What Game Did You Leave D&D For?

[Reynard]

A couple notes, first:

1) I don't mean that in a literal sense, or a permanent one.

2) The question isn't an invitation to bag on D&D; it is an invitation to talk about our changing preferences.

With that -- I am hanging up my 5E DM's screen for a while and switching over to Savage Worlds (the new Adventure Edition) for a while. One major reason is I am doing a bunch of writing and designing for Savage Worlds this year, but even if not I would be looking for a replacement for 5E for the time being.

There are a couple reasons I need to give up D&D for a while but the primary one is the way the game changes through the process of leveling. I just don't like it. I don't really care too much what level you play D&D at, in my experience it works pretty well (with higher levels taking more effort, of course). I tend to run long mini-campaigns at cons and when those happen without any leveling, the 4 or 6 four hour sessions over the course of the con weekend work well. There's no expectation of leveling, so there's no "build" happening. The characters are defined and the players explore those definitions.

But in the ongoing home campaign -- especially one at low levels, which is where I prefer my D&D anyway -- leveling occurs and the game changes. the characters change quickly and their approach to the world changes. The way they interact with the NPCs and bad guys and environments all change. In short order it does not feel like the same group of protagonists or even the same world.

So I decided I am going to go for a system where advancement is more incremental and while characters grow they won't necessarily transform the way 5E PCs do.

What games have you decided to switch to from D&D -- any edition, any length of time ago? Why?

 

[DQDesign]

To my own Dungeon World hack. Because I find the fail forward mechanic really useful and relevant to the overall benefit of the gaming experience. Also because it is a lot more accessible to newbies (less rules, less math), and leaves more space for GMs rulings, a lot more than the advantage/disadvantage rule. Finally it requires less work from the GM side and provides more satisfaction to him/her because of the 'play to find out what happens' rule.

 

[Retreater]

While I'm still running two campaigns (!!!) in 5e, I've started another two campaigns (!!!) in 4e. I had fun with 4e in a "beer and pretzels" way with D&D Encounters and made many great friends through those events. Still, I never considered it a core D&D campaign - as I was into Pathfinder at that time.

All this changed last year at Origins. My gf and I played in a 4e game, and she loved it. Then I was watching Matt Colville's videos on YouTube about the good parts of 4e's tactical combat design. So we decided to try a 4e game with a few other players in the area who remembered it fondly. Now I'm getting more and more players wanting me to run 4e for them. Apparently, it was an untapped market in the local meta. Now my friend's wife is DMing a 4e game for her friends.

I'm enjoying the balance, the exciting combats, the breadth of different character archetypes available, streamlined and sensible rules.

A couple years ago I took a break from running D&D to run Masks of Nyarlahotep in Call of Cthulhu - and it was a great game. But after the campaign, we weren't wanting to start a new one right away.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I still play in a 5e game that is on 2 month hiatus. But for my game after OotA I dropped 5e for Swords and Wizardry, an OD&D clone game. Much more streamlined, minimal mods and stuff to track, and I can use any OD&D/AD&D material with it very easily. Why? 5e was too easy, I pretty much had to rewrite monsters on the fly. With book stuff it was mostly cakewalks for 90% of encounters, after the first few levels. I liked some of the design goals but honestly it just wasn't for me. I like a more minimalist game that I can build on if it needs something.

 

[timbannock]

Back in the 90s, we wrapped an AD&D 2e Planescape campaign and played years and years of World of Darkness.

We came back for 3E, but would often just play 5-10 sessions and then go "on break" for a different game for another 3-10 sessions at a time. We played stuff like Tribe 8, various Cortex games, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, and *very* short-lived or meant-to-be-one-off GURPS, Star Wars, and Shadowrun games.

4E was fun but only did maybe 5 sessions with. Then it was onto more Paranoia and Cortex.

5E drew me back in hard. But I also did some OD&D and AD&D here and there. So I basically traded one version of D&D for another.

At the moment, it's mostly Cortex and Paranoia. Cortex's toolbox setup is just so good, and it can vary from rules-lite (Leverage and my Head Shot game) to pretty crunchy (Marvel Heroic and Smallville) while still maintaining the same basic mechanic (roll dice pool, keep 2 and add them to get a total) so that's very nice to have consistency yet options. Paranoia's new edition is just a blast to play because they've game-ified a lot of the skullduggery and backstabbing, and that's such a departure from D&D's "team sport" style of tactical play.

 

[Derren]

Traveller, Shadowrun, DSA.

Basically all games with more complex character development instead of a combat only linear path and much more options beside hack&slash than D&D in response of 4E turning the game into an offline dungeon crawl MMO.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

In the early 90s, for a while we were playing more Vampire: The Masquerade than AD&D (because 90s), but we never left it behind entirely.

The only time that happened for me was during 3e, when we switched from D&D to Castles & Crusades. While I don’t have as much of a need for C&C these days with 5e, back then it took 3e's unified mechanics, simplified them, and married it to an old school feel.

 

[cmad1977]

Video games.

 

[reelo]

My 5E campaign is currently suspended and I'm in the planning stages of either a B/X-based hexcrawl with Barrowmaze (a mix of B/X, LotFP, and the odd OSR-houserule), or, a campaign of straight up AS&SH but not necessarily set in its native setting of Hyperborea.

I find 5E too cartoonish/furry and want to go back to the more humanocentric simplicity of older editions. I like 5E, the system is great, but the fluff (and that includes subclasses) is just not to my taste anymore.

 

[Morrus]

What Game Did You Leave D&D For?

I’ve played multiple games for years. I don’t see it as leaving one or another any more than when I have a meal I’ve ‘left’ the meal I had yesterday. Just “this campaign we’ll play D&D” and “this one is a Call of Cthulhu campaign”.