Recommend us a new system!

[Aus_Snow]

I'm on a roll, pointing toward the ORE, so why not: Nemesis. It meets all eight of your specifications, as far as I can tell. Some of the fan-made material at that site might be of particular interest to you.

edit --- Perhaps it meets about 7.75 of your 8. Modules (adventures) are pretty rare at the best of times, for anything that isn't D&D. There are a (very) few exceptions, such as CoC, but even so. D&D has the numbers, overwhelmingly.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I'll echo Savage Worlds. Fantastic game, easy to learn and very fast. It shaves off a lot on nuance to reduce bookkeeping and combat time.

There are many different settings available if you don't want to create your own, just check out peginc.com to see. Each setting comes with a full intro campaign and a bunch of adventure seeds, and the site had plenty of One Sheets, which are complete adventures that fit on the front and back of one sheet of paper.

If you do want to create your own, the core book gives guidance on how to do that, and how to convert a much beloved setting to the system.


Now, if you're looking for a game that's deeper, more nuanced, and grittier than D&D, I recommend Shadowrun, but that can be a dark path to start down. In the beginning, it's all action and fun, but some day you'll wake up and realize that you're deeply trapped in twenty years worth of metaplot, watching your back when you go outside for fear of hitmen, and analyzing store security for weaknesses.