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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 8557979" data-attributes="member: 23240">I don't have a single preferred system, so I'll pitch a few games I like, de3pending on what your issue with D&D is.Are you fine with D&D focusing on combat, but find D&D fights boring? Try Lancer. It's a SF game about mecha pilots. Lancer combat is very tactical and full of interesting choices. It also perfectly mixes variety and balance, so that various build options are very different, but not better or worse. And it does this with significantly less modifier math than D&D 3e or 4e.If you dislike how D&D PCs quickly get overwhelmingly powerful and no longer find human scale obstacles challenging? Check Mouse Guard. PCs in this game are the titular mice, but it doesn't mean the game is for kids. It's early medieval low fantasy with no supernatural elements. Focused on travel and survival; gritty but optimistic. It's a game about true heroes - not ones who succeed because they are powerful, but ones who take risks and do what has to be done despite being small and weak.If that sounds fun, but you really dislike the idea of playing mice, Ironsworn is a good alternative. It's a bit more story oriented than Mouse Guard and has some magic, but many themes are common. Ironsworn may be played with or without GM and even solo. In traditional (with GM) mode it gives a lot of support for the person running the game.If you feel that D&D combat isn't cinematic enough or if you would prefer a game where PCs lose sometimes without getting killed, Fate may be a good idea. It's explicitly an engine for a group creating stories together. It runs on movie logic; it simulates a genre, not a setting. Its rules directly describe and interface with the fiction, without the disconnect that often happens in D&D. If you'd like your sessions to feel like Pirates of the Caribbean, Fate is a perfect game for that.If cinematic sounds good, but you'd like something that focuses more on what PCs feel, not just the action, try Masks. It's a game about teenage superheroes, with more focus on "teenage" than on "superhero". While it has a lot of action, the action mainly serves to frame how the PCs struggle with their emotions and self-image, how they are affected and shaped by others' opinions and expectations. It also has a rule specifically intended to let PCs have "crowning moments of awesome" when their feelings and powers finally come together.If D&D settings feel generic and kitchen sink for you, with PCs having no real ties to the setting lore and no real responsibilities, you may be interested in Exalted. Among all RPGs I know it has the deepest and most inspiring setting. PCs are really powerful and godlike (to be more specific: the setting is Asian flavored and has a lot of gods of different power levels, so starting PCs are actually more powerful than majority of the deities). Typical Exalted sessions are a mixture of supernatural martial arts fighting and politics, with a side of exploring (and sometimes changing) the setting's cosmology.If you like the idea of PCs having strange powers, but don't want fighting to be a significant part of your game, check Nobilis, Glitch and Chuubo's Miraculous Wish-Granting Engine. All three games share a lot in terms of both mechanics and setting concepts, but each has a different focus. Nobilis puts politics and philosophy in the center, with each PC being a divine ruler and guardian of a single aspect of reality. Chuubo's combines quirky PCs (building machines out of nightmares is one of the most normal concepts in the book) with pastoral, slice-of-life play where renovating a house or taking part in a cookie baking competition may be a focus of an arc. Glitch PCs are monstrous enemies of the world, now retired and trying to find peace with it, but painfully incompatible with it to the point where it gradually kills them. If you'd like to play somebody who can easily consume their enemies with hellfire, but can't keep a job or even bathe regularly - and who no longer wants to burn anybody - Glitch is a game for you.</blockquote>

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