What Game Did You Leave D&D For?

[innerdude]

I'd been running Pathfinder following its release in 2008 for close to a year, but the cracks in the system were already showing when the characters hit level 8. Having to "Christmas tree" every enemy with armor and magic items just to keep the combats interesting. No "bounded accuracy" and stacking feats meant my level 8 monk player could get his character up to 35+ armor class without even breaking a sweat. The inquisitor class in the hands of a highly competent player . . . insanity.

So I started tooling around with other systems. Fantasy Craft. Legends of Anglerre (Fate 2.0). GURPS (as a player, not GM).

Then randomly came across a $10 copy of Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition at my LGS while in grad school. Didn't even play it for 18 months after I bought it, then tried it for a short, 2-3 session Firefly "fling."

Two years later, finally put a group together to try it for full-on fantasy campaign when Savage Worlds Deluxe came out. That campaign ran 14 months, and we've never looked back since.

Of course, now six years later I'm ready for a little more diversity. Already have Genesys and three sets of dice. Bought Night's Black Agents, and will almost certainly buy the new Gumshoe fantasy game that [MENTION=2]Piratecat[/MENTION] is publishing.

The problem I have with D&D/d20 now is that truthfully, system-wise it feels like a step backward---even for something as elegantly put together as Fantasy Craft. I've been doing skill-based systems for so long now, that going back to class/level based character design feels like a slap in the face. Plus, Savage Worlds gives me so much more of the right "feel" and emergent play that I'm looking for as a GM.

My current list of games I'd actively choose to GM looks something like this:


-Savage Worlds
-Genesys
-The One Ring
-Gumshoe / Night's Black Agents / Ashen Stars / Swords of the Serpentine


----Six feet of dirt---


D6 Fantasy
Star Wars D6
Something PbtA (Dungeon World or Masks)
Novus
Fantasy Craft
Fantasy AGE / Dragon Age
Burning Wheel (though this is a pipe dream, my players would never go for it)


----Another six feet of dirt----


GURPS
HERO
Runequest


---30 feet of crap---


Any d20 system not named Fantasy Craft (D&D, Pathfinder, 13th Age, Numenara, Demon Lord, etc.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As far as dungeon RPGs go, I switched from 5E to Gishes & Goblins; which is a lot like going from AD&D to Palladium Fantasy, except with fewer charts.

It's something different, and it addresses all of my specific issues with 5E.

 

[dragoner]

Started with Holmes, then to AD&D, never really left, played other games such as Traveller and Call of Cthulhu; mixed AD&D liberally with Gamma World and Boot Hill. Played Aftermath for a while, Twilight 2000, and 2300AD, gf at the time got me to play Vampire: The Masquerade, did some others such as Space Opera, Star Frontier, Mechanoids, Beyond the Surpernatural, Champions, and Top Secret. Wound up with a heavy Rifts addiction until the mid-2000's, then wandered back to Traveller about 2009 (Classic and Mongoose, with a bit of T5) then on to a few games of 5e D&D; lately it has been running a play-by-post of Classic Traveller in my own near future hardish SF setting, and running a face to face game in the same setting except with M-Space rules, then there has been some on and off Mythras games running Caverns of Thracia, which I have converted. D&D hasn't been left behind, it just doesn't have the thrill factor, maybe I'm just jaded.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

FFG Star Wars. It has rekindled my love for all things Star Wars, and greatly expanded my exposure to other great forms of media and the WEG version. But its the mechanics and the style of play that is so dramatically different and intuitive. I think Genesys would be equally pleasing to me, but I already 20+ books for Star Wars and waiting for more.

I am also in the camp where if I do return to D&D, I will most likely go back to 4th Edition.

 

[gamerprinter]

Because I decided to use Pathfinder RPG to develop and publish my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror. I stopped playing 3.5 to start playing Pathfinder, now I'm developing and publishing for Starfinder. I haven't even looked at D&D since 3.5, so no 4.0 nor 5.0. Besides I am not interested in a streamlined, lighter game - PF is the right amount of crunch for the games I play.

 

[Arilyn]

My F20 game of choice is 13th Age. I love the background system, one unique thing and the escalation die. Still play 5e as a quickie throw together game. It's fun, but isn't my bedrock game, so to speak.

My other favourites are Fate and Cortex Plus. Currently intending to give Prince Valiant a spin. Also, really enjoy Cthulhu One to One. I like a variety of RPGs. Won't get to them all, alas.

 

[Manbearcat]

I've GMed 5e out of charity about 25 times or so (so approximately 100 - 120 hours) from '14 - '17.

So technically I stopped running orthodox D&D when my last 4e game culminated several years ago; 2014 (outside of a few small games of 4e)?

In the intervening years I've been running:

Dungeon World (various games including a Darkest Dungeon Hack)
Apocalypse World
Blades in the Dark
Torchbearer
Dogs in the Vineyard
Ten Candles
Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy and MHRP
Strike! (for Star Wars)
Beyond the Wall w/ some B/X tech hacked in

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I picked up D&D in Aurora, CO in 1977. A couple years later, in Manhattan, KS, I was introduced to Traveller and The Fantasy Trip. That was it until Champions hit the scene in the early 1980s, and it became my favorite. That happened when I lived in Irving, TX.

And that was the extent of my RPG exposure until I went to Austin, TX to attend Law School in 1990.

There, I found a group that played D&D...and many other games. Because of the way we did things, I played, playtested and bought over 100 different RPGs, covering a broad array of genres. I still have most of my purchases from that time in my life. And I have added many excellent games to the collection.

But while I’ve still probably played some form of D&D more than any other game- maybe more than all the others put together*- HERO (the name the Champions RPG system is most commonly known by) is my #1.





* especially since I was a part of a campaign that started in AD&D, was converted to 2Ed, then 3Ed and 3.5Ed.

 

[MNblockhead]

In High School I dumped my 1e campaign and switched to Warhammer because I was a teenager who loved the grimdark world of Warhammer. We were also playing many other games: Star Frontiers, Paranoia, Boot Hill, Gamma World, some super hero game (forgot which) and completely home-brewed systems. But after I stopped my D&D game, nobody in my group was playing D&D.

Then I stopped gaming for a couple decades.

I don't see a repeat of my high-school experience happening. I don't have the time to play as many games as I did in high school and of my gaming time, I spend a lot of it on board games. I expect that I've be running 5e campaigns for years to come. But, at the same time I will run and play one-offs and mini campaigns in other systems. Since getting back into TTRPGs with 5e, I've run Paranoia and InSPECTres. I've also bought 7 Seas and backed The Expanse. I'll play in and try anything and some recent non-D&D games I've enjoyed as a player have included Dungeon Crawl Classics, Mutant Crawl Classics, and I'll be playing the Pathfinder 2.0 playtest, Starfinder, and Dialect at an upcoming Con.

 

[Tonguez]

I went from the Basic set to Playing GURPS because of the share brilliance of the supplements
then came back to 3e and then Pathfinder, dont like 4e, now love Fate Accelerated, havent made the move to 5e, but it does look good