Most common RPGs of today?

[Piperken]

In the city I live in the games being ran at all the games stores are 80% Dnd with a couple tables playing "Shadowdark", a couple tables playing "Draw Steel", a table that plays "Mothership", and a table that plays "Traveller".

Echoing above format, non (5th ed) D&D games being played in person, roughly from most popular:

Shadowdark
Dungeon Crawl Classics
AD&D
OSE
Call of Cthulhu
Mothership / Delta Green / Shadowrun 6th ed

 

[Micah Sweet]

Echoing above format, non (5th ed) D&D games being played in person, roughly from most popular:

Shadowdark
Dungeon Crawl Classics
AD&D
OSE
Call of Cthulhu
Mothership / Delta Green / Shadowrun 6th ed

I have a monthly game that alternates between Shadowdark and DCC, so that checks out.

 

[...m...]

Echoing above format, non (5th ed) D&D games being played in person, roughly from most popular:

Shadowdark
Dungeon Crawl Classics
AD&D
OSE
Call of Cthulhu
Mothership / Delta Green / Shadowrun 6th ed

pirate borg

 

[neceros]

If your goal is character creation with no specific campaign to join or game to play, GURPS and Hero System are still outright winners. D&D 3rd edition not bad either, if you make something above 1st level.

I've made sheets for 3rd and gurps. not hero though

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Most popular RPG: D&D 5e

Second most popular RPG: Old versions of D&D

Popular RPGs that aren't D&D:
Pathfinder 2e
Daggerheart
Shadowdark
Mork Borg (and variants, e.g. Pirate Borg)
Draw Steel
Call of Cthulhu (especially in Japan)

There's lots more, obviously. I'm sure you'll get dozens more names. But that's my short list. I think it covers a lot of what's "popular".

If you're looking for anything in particular, it will help to give more guidance than just "popular". There's so much niche content out there. Old School Renaissance stuff, story based stuff, mini based stuff, VTT based stuff. What do you like?

This is a good list, but Old School Essentials (as distinct from just the cloud of OSR games) is worth including, since it's the 800 pound gorilla in the OSR space, closely followed by Shadowdark now. Mothership is also pretty huge nowadays.

If you're interested in making character sheets, @neceros, both Pirate Borg and Mork Borg have very stylized character sheets that were probably fun for the creators to draw but are actually pretty mediocre for actual play. Both games would definitely have an eager audience for cleaner sheets.

On the other hand, Mothership is very popular, but its character sheet is held up as the design everyone else ought to emulate going forward, so there's probably not a lot of demand for a new sheet there.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Second for Mothership, it's a fantastic game!

 

[CommodoreKong]

I find it amazing the PDF is $60 thank you none the less

The $10 Delian Tomb adventure is a level 1-3 starter adventure for Draw Steel that includes all the rules you need to run the first 3 levels of the game. It’s a great way to dip your toes in the Draw Steel water for very little.

I ran The Delian Tomb late last year/early this year and can’t recommend it and Draw Steel enough. It’s a wonderful, well designed system and Delian Tomb is a good starter adventure. My players all enjoyed it and are looking forward to playing the mega adventure Crack the Sun when it releases.

 

[CommodoreKong]

And its not only expensive, its also really bad laid out, felt for me really unprofessional especially since it makes reading the rules take even longer than normal..


I would start with something cheaper and easier to read maybe ironsworn which is free and more different to D&D: Free Ironsworn Downloads

Yeah as much as I enjoy Draw Steel they made some questionable design choices with their Heroes book. It feels like they never had someone unfamiliar with Draw Steel look at the book and only people very familiar with it.

 

[mamba]

I can get a slightly better deal for PDFs than $30 each most of the time, even corebooks.

you mean 29.99, because most of the time things are not in sale…

Also they're charging more than that for individual PDFs. $30 is the bundle price.

agreed, but if you want to play the game, you need the core books, this one at least only has two, unlike 5e